Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

crimes has been of a most fiendish character.”
    The best efforts of Detective Inspector Abberline, Detective Sergeant Godley and the might of Scotland Yard produced no results, though their collective view was that the murderer was the same man who had murdered Mary Ann Nichols, and that, once again, the victim had been murdered where she was found. This conclusion was quickly reached because no blood was found anywhere other than in the immediate vicinity of the body. Despite an intensive investigation, no clues were to be discovered in the small Hanbury Street backyard, in the long stone corridor leading to the front door, in the house itself or on the street outside. Wide ranging house-to-house enquiries were made, suspects were rounded up and questioned, but nothing suspicious was found by the police.
    It was clear to us that Lizzie Williams possessed two main objectives for the murder: the first was to slaughter her victim in the quickest, most efficient manner possible; the second was to cut out and take away her uterus; but why she would want such an organ we had no idea. Wynne Baxter, who conducted Chapman’s inquest, said: “…the injuries have been made by someone who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge. There are no meaningless cuts. It was done by one who knew where to find what he wanted [the uterus], what difficulties he would have to contend against, and how he should use his knife so as to abstract the organ without injury to it. No unskilled person could have known where to find it.”
    There was of course a third objective – and that was to avoid getting caught. Everything was geared towards these aims, and the murderer carried them through with impressive effect.
    We wondered how Lizzie Williams had persuaded Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman to go with her – or she with them – to the forsaken places where their dead bodies were found. What might she have said to them? The first, Nichols, in a dark, quiet street while people slept and night-watchmen tended their braziers; the second, Chapman, in the enclosed backyard of a fully occupied tenement building just after sunrise, when people were already up and going about their business. Neither location was an ideal place to commit murder and expect to get away with it; Hanbury Street was even less suitable than Buck’s Row. Why was it that both victims were willing to lie down as though they expected to perform the sexual act? And how did each of the women allow themselves to be attacked and murdered without, apparently, uttering a sound or offering any form of resistance? For what possible reason would Lizzie Williams want her victim’s uterus? What had caused the three scratches on Annie Chapman’s neck, why was her pocket torn, and what was the explanation for the personal effects tidied up so neatly at her feet?
    We wondered if it was not these items we should concern ourselves with, but something that was not now amongst Annie Chapman’s personal possessions: a standard piece of professional equipment that no self-respecting prostitute would wish to be found dead without.
    When, after the murder of Catherine Eddowes, committed just over three weeks later, her effects were itemised at the City Mortuary in Golden Lane, they included two white handkerchiefs, one large, one smaller; twelve pieces of white rag, a piece of coarse linen, a small-toothed comb, a piece of red flannel and more than a dozen other items of no particular significance.
    The handkerchiefs, the rags, the linen and the flannel were the type of items routinely carried by all prostitutes and used to clean themselves after their business with a client had been concluded. No such items, apart from a small piece of muslin, were found amongst Annie Chapman’s remaining possessions which mysteriously appeared to have been ‘arranged’ by her feet, though, as a prostitute, it is certain that she would have carried various pieces of cloth.
    Why Lizzie Williams had not washed the blood from her hands using the clean water in the pan was another unanswered question, and would she have gone out onto the streets in daylight after the murder with her hands covered in blood? It did not seem likely to us, but what other explanation could there be?
    The manhunt in the days that followed the discovery of Annie Chapman’s body was the biggest ever seen in London. The East End, and particularly Whitechapel, was saturated with dozens of detectives and constables