Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

Under Inspector Abberline’s intensive questioning, Schwartz could not say if the man attacking the deceased and the man running after him were acting in concert or not.
    According to Dr Blackwell, Elizabeth Stride had died at some time after 12.46 a.m., perhaps even after 12.56. The victim’s throat had been cut. There had been no robbery as far as anyone could tell; the deceased’s clothing had not been interfered with, and there was no evidence of a struggle or sexual assault. So the motive for her murder, as for those of Mary Ann Nichols and Dark Annie Chapman before her, was inexplicable.
    But there was something strange: the beat of P.C. William Smith, which took about 30 minutes for him to complete, brought him along Berner Street. At a time between 12.30 and 12.35, he passed a man and a woman wearing a single red rose on maidenhair fern in her buttonhole, both of whom he observed carefully, in accordance with his orders (in case the woman might be protecting the man). He later identified the female as the deceased. The man and woman were talking together on the other side of the street, opposite the gates to Dutfield’s Yard.
    At about 12.45, some 10 or perhaps 15 minutes later, James Brown, a dock labourer, saw a man and a woman talking together at the corner of Berner Street and Fairclough Street. When questioned by the coroner, Wynne Baxter, at Stride’s inquest on 5 October, Brown said he was “almost certain” that the woman he had seen was the same woman he had identified in the mortuary, Elizabeth Stride, but when pressed, he said he had not seen a red rose in her jacket. Since he could not possibly have missed seeing the flower if the woman he saw was wearing one, whomever he had seen it was not Elizabeth Stride. Since Stride was middle-aged, it seems reasonable to assume that the woman Brown saw was of a similar age. The woman, who was just yards away from where the murder was committed just a few minutes later, has never been identified. Was she perhaps the murderer?
    Since the time of Brown’s sighting, at 12.45 according to his statement, was the very same time that Israel Schwartz said it was when he was walking down Berner Street, one of them must have been mistaken. On a balance of probabilities, it was more likely that it was James Brown who had made the error. He left his home not long after 12.10 a.m., and had not checked the time since.
    Within three weeks of the murder, about eighty suspects who had been detained by the police were cleared of any involvement in the crime, while a further three hundred more were investigated, but without result. No one whom the detectives questioned could throw any light on the crime, or suggest a credible suspect. The murderer had vanished.
    The Star on 1 October stated: “He must be inoffensive, probably respectable in manner and appearance, or else after the murderous warnings of last week, woman after woman could not have been decoyed by him. Two theories are suggested to us – that he may wear women’s clothes, or may be a policeman.”
    The attacks seemed to be getting more brutal with the discovery of each new body. Mary Ann Nichols, who was throttled and had had her throat cut, sustained severe abdominal injuries; Annie Chapman was partially throttled, her throat cut, her abdomen torn open and her uterus ripped out. But in the case of Elizabeth Stride only her throat had been cut; so why was that all?
    One popular opinion is that Diemschutz had disturbed the murderer before further injury could be inflicted. It was clear that the murder had only just happened, as evidenced by the blood that was still flowing from the open wound to the victim’s neck. Another, equally likely possibility, is that the murderer intended only to kill Elizabeth Stride, but not to mutilate her body.
    The police line of thought was that the murderer may have stayed hidden in the yard until the coast was clear, and escaped when the driver ran into the club to seek help – which was a reasonable assumption to make. Alternatively, by the time Diemschutz arrived at the yard with his pony and cart, the killer had only just left; but Diemschutz had neither seen nor heard anyone leaving the scene of the crime. Yet that was not unusual. As the police would have been the first to admit, no one had been seen or heard fleeing from the scenes of the Nichols and Chapman murders either. In all three cases, after committing the crimes, the murderer had simply disappeared, as