Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

kneeling beside her, had cut her throat, mutilated her face, opened her abdomen, removed her intestines, cut out her uterus and left kidney, sliced off part of her victim’s apron, in which she wrapped the organs, and then made her escape. Yet again, incredible though it was, no one living in the square saw or heard a thing. It was almost as if the victim had willingly gone to her death because, once again, there was no sign that a struggle had taken place. No one saw or heard anyone enter the square, and no one saw or heard anyone leave. It was as though the murderer was invisible – which of course she was, just as long as the police were searching for a man.
    Finally, we reached Mary Jane Kelly, Lizzie Williams’s fifth and final victim; age twenty-five, mother to a young boy, several failed relationships, the latest being with Joseph Barnett, a labourer and fish-porter, which ended on 30 October, just over a week before her murder. Occupation: common prostitute; estimated time of death, about 4.00 a.m. Her throat had been cut; her face slashed –
    I stopped in my tracks. I had just remembered something about the Catherine Eddowes case which I thought warranted further investigation. It concerned the terrible facial injuries she had sustained. I thought at first they were the result of a frenzied attack, but Dr Frederick Brown’s medical report told a different story when looked at a second time. At first reading, it might have appeared that Catherine Eddowes’s face had been slashed to ribbons, but those injuries paled into insignificance against the other appalling wounds inflicted upon her: a great gaping gash about her throat; her abdomen ripped open from breasts to private parts, her uterus torn from her body, her left kidney cut out and both organs removed from the scene of the crime. Nevertheless, there was something about the injuries to her face that made us want to study the medical report again.
    Dr Frederick Brown, the City Police Surgeon, performed the autopsy on Catherine Eddowes’s body on Sunday afternoon, 30 September at the City Mortuary. He noted a laceration through both her left and right eyelids; a deep gouge from the bridge of the nose which extended across the right cheek; an abrasion to the left cheek; the tip of the nose had been severed; there was a wound to her upper lip, and the right side of the mouth was slit, the lobe of her right ear had been sliced off and, on each cheek, a triangular flap of skin had been cut on two sides by four oblique incisions, each about 1½ inches long. Mr F.W. Foster, an architect and surveyor commissioned to provide plans of the murder site for the inquest, also produced a rough sketch of the victim at the mortuary on 30 September, which clearly illustrates the injuries Eddowes had sustained.
    It seemed to us that Catherine Eddowes’s facial injuries were not the result of random slashing, as we had thought at first. We realised that every single one of Eddowes’s facial features – those that gave her a feminine appearance – had been destroyed. The murderer had deliberately obliterated Catherine Eddowes’s face – but why? There was something else strange too: the two triangular flaps of skin carved into each cheek. Was that all they were? Four nicks, two on each cheek which met at a point so that the inverted letter V appeared to have been formed. They had clearly been inflicted deliberately: but why?
    The gash to Eddowes’s abdomen was odd too; it was not the dreadful, callous tearing wound from privates to ribs which it appeared to be at first. Instead, it commenced at her private parts, and the blade was drawn upwards to a point where it ended between her breasts. But it was not a straight line. The incision, instead of being drawn up the body in a vertical line, veered immediately to the left; then it circumscribed the navel completely before changing direction again, this time continuing towards the sternum. It was as though the murderer had intentionally avoided damaging the organ located above the pubis – the uterus. Once again, this was no indiscriminate attack, and the abdomen had not been mindlessly ripped open. The wounds appeared to have been administered deliberately. In fact, there was only one rational explanation; it was surgery!
    After the murderer had cut Annie Chapman’s throat, she divided her abdomen, tore out her uterus and took it away. Now, she had repeated the very same act on hapless Catherine Eddowes but,