Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

MURDERS
     
     
    Friday, 31 August
Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly, was 43. Her body was discovered at 3.40 a.m. in a gateway in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. Her throat had been cut twice, her abdomen ripped open.
     
    Saturday, 8 September
Annie Chapman, known as Dark Annie, was 47. Her body was discovered at 6.00 a.m. in a backyard in Hanbury Street, Whitechapel. Her throat had been cut, her abdomen ripped open. Her uterus had been excised from her body and removed from the scene.
     
    Sunday, 30 September
Elizabeth Stride, known as Long Liz, was 45. Her body was discovered at 1.00 a.m. inside an open gateway to Dutfield’s Yard in Berner Street, Whitechapel. Her throat had been cut. She was the first of two victims to be murdered that night in what came to be known as the ‘double event’.
     
    Catherine Eddowes, the second victim to be murdered that night, was 46. Her body was discovered at 1.44 a.m. in Mitre Square, Whitechapel. Her throat had been cut, her face mutilated, her abdomen ripped open, and her uterus and left kidney both excised and removed from the scene.
     
    Friday, 9 November
Mary Jane Kelly at 25 was by far the youngest victim. Her body was discovered at 11.00 a.m. in a rented room at 13 Miller’s Court, Whitechapel. Her throat had been severed, her body hacked to pieces and almost all her internal organs removed. They were recovered later, except for her heart. No trace of it was ever found.
     
    In the autumn of 1888, the bodies of these five women, all of them prostitutes, were discovered in Whitechapel within a one-mile radius of each other. The murders were investigated by the finest senior detectives from Scotland Yard, recognised then as the best and most efficient police force in the world. Despite the most intensive hunt for a killer ever carried out in Britain up to that time, no one was caught, nor was the reason why such terrible crimes had been carried out ever discovered. In the many decades that followed, innumerable theories have been put forward as to the identity of the killer, none of them conclusive. Up to now, the identity of the murderer and the motive behind the murders have remained insoluble mysteries.

CHAPTER 1
     
    9 November 1888
     
     
    I t surpassed Dante’s vision of hell. Not in his wildest imagination could the supreme medieval poet have dreamed up a scene of such horror. There was blood everywhere: on the bed, on the floor, on the walls and even on the ceiling. Pieces of skin, flayed from the victim’s abdomen, and flesh from her thighs lay on a small bedside table; more skin and lumps of flesh, hacked from her arms and legs, were left on a larger table. Several feet of intestines and the young woman’s spleen were strewn across the bed, where blood had soaked through the thin mattress and dripped silently into a widening , crimson pool on the floor. Her uterus, kidneys and one severed breast had been pushed under her head. The other breast lay beside her right foot. Her liver nestled between her feet on a coverlet caked in yet more blood. The stench of blood and gore was overwhelming – enough to make a person retch. The small room at number 13 Miller’s Court was truly hell on earth.
    Mary Kelly was an attractive young woman and the final victim of the Whitechapel murderer, more popularly known as Jack the Ripper. Her stiffening corpse lay on its back near to the left-hand side of the bed. Her face, drained of colour, was turned away from the wall, her sightless pale blue eyes having lost their shine, stared from behind a thin grey film towards the middle of the room. She was almost naked, save for a sheer linen undergarment which had been slashed away at the front. Her right carotid artery had been savagely cut, and her throat severed to the spine, which was deeply scored by the blade of a knife; a torrent of blood from the gaping wound had matted almost all her long, light-coloured hair. Her nose had been hacked off and lay on one side, while her cheeks, eyebrows and ears were partially removed. Several cuts ran obliquely from her lips to her chin and her face was covered in so much blood that she was barely recognisable. Her knees were bent and her legs had been forced unnaturally wide apart. Mary Kelly’s torso was torn open from her ribs to her private parts, her insides viciously ripped out. Her right arm was placed in such a way that her hand was pushed inside the now empty cavity of her belly. With her entire body hideously disfigured,