Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

célèbre now and is kept in its own protective box. But it is shabby and the dull covers have separated from the spine. Each of the pages, representing a single day, is separated by a piece of pink blotting paper. But many of the pages have been removed; either cut away or torn out, so that very few remain. Those that are left are empty. The blotting paper, however, has not been removed and it is clear from the ink that had soaked into them that the diary had been extensively used during the greater part of the calendar year 1888. Nevertheless, it was impossible to tell from them what had been recorded on the pages that had been removed.
    It was certainly very peculiar and seemed to indicate something; but what? While Tony Williams asserted that the diary supported his contention that Dr John Williams had recorded aspects of his life that he later preferred the world not to know – that he was the murderer and had destroyed the records that would have proved this – it seems equally likely, if not more so, that he had recorded his wife Lizzie’s increasingly erratic and worrying behaviour, leading to her breakdown. When she finally confessed her crimes to him, he then understood why she had behaved in the way she had, and he removed the pages to cover all trace of his wife’s medical history and previously inexplicable conduct both leading up to, and during, the ten weeks of the murders.
    There was no diary listed for the following year, which was disappointing since it might have thrown some light on the events of the previous year, nor, for that matter, the year after that. The next entry, number 330, listed the diary of Sir John Williams for the year 1891, along with the description ‘Entries are full’. But this diary too was odd and contained nothing of the year indicated by its cover, because every one of the dates had been altered so that they reconciled with the following year. Thursday 8 January 1891 was crossed out and now read Thursday 7 January 1892: Friday 6 February 1891 was now amended to Friday 5 February 1892, and so on. It recorded nothing of interest or significance except for a number of payments made to various tradesmen. This meant that there were no diary records from the start of 1888 to the end of 1891 – which included the two-year period following the murders when we believe that Lizzie Williams was recovering from her breakdown, and staying with her family in Wales.
    Sending Lizzie home to Wales to recuperate, immediately after her breakdown and possible confession to her husband of the murders, was a shrewd move on his part because her highly charged emotional state meant that she might otherwise be in danger of letting something ‘slip’. It also removed her from their circle of acquaintances at a time when they may have realised that she was unwell, so her two-year absence from Queen Anne Street at this time would have surprised no one.
    In the event, the ploy failed, because when Lizzie returned to her home in London, by now 63 Brook Street, of which Dr Williams had taken the lease on 31 March 1890, it seems that Lizzie did indeed say or do something that forced him – quite unexpectedly – to change his plans dramatically, and set a new course for the future. What that might have been we shall explore later.
    Another unusual item Tony Williams discovered in his great-great- uncle’s box of personal belongings was a sharp-bladed knife with a dark wooden handle, the blade tarnished by age. The tip, he asserted, had broken off, but it matched in every other respect the description of the knife that Dr Thomas Bond, who had been involved in the Kelly murder investigation, considered had been used to inflict the injuries on Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly which, he said, were “all of the same character”. He described the weapon used as “a strong knife, very sharp, pointed at the top, about an inch in width and at least six inches long … it may have been … a surgeon’s knife … a straight knife.” In the Nichols murder, Dr Rees Ralph Llewellyn described the murder weapon as “a strong-bladed knife, moderately sharp….” In Annie Chapman’s death, Dr George Bagster Phillips gave his opinion that the murder weapon was “a very sharp weapon, probably with a thin, narrow blade at least six to eight inches long, perhaps a small amputating knife.” Catherine Eddowes’s murderer, according to Dr Frederick Gordon Brown, “had performed the mutilations to the