Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

she resembled a slaughtered beast hanging on a butcher’s hook rather than a human being, and certainly not a young, attractive woman.
    At that time of year, November, and during the colder winter months, damp mists rising from the Essex marshes would drift towards London driven by light, easterly winds. There, they combined with the toxic black smoke spewed from a hundred thousand chimneys to create a permanent miasma: the filthy, poisonous, sulphurous mist of a London pea soup fog.
    At 8.30 a.m. several hours after the murder on that same cold grey morning, a woman emerged from Miller’s Court. She walked briskly up the narrow stone passageway to the corner of the lane, and then turned right into Dorset Street. Mrs Caroline Maxwell, a housewife who lived in a lodging house opposite the arched entrance to the court, saw her, though her vision would have been somewhat impaired by the thick foul mists swirling around the streets.
    While the finer features of the woman were obscured, Maxwell could see the brightly coloured clothes she was wearing: a green bodice, a brown linsey skirt and a red knitted crossover shawl. They were the very same clothes that Mary Kelly had been wearing when Caroline Maxwell had met her the previous day.
    Maxwell called out to her across the street, as the woman hurried from the passageway. “What, Mary, brings you up so early?”
    The woman immediately turned towards her.
    ‘I have the horrors of the drink upon me as I have been drinking for some days past,’ the woman replied in a familiar Welsh accent.
    After a further brief exchange, it started to rain, and both women moved on.
    Shortly after 11.00, more than two hours later, Thomas Bowyer, a shop assistant, called to Kelly’s room to collect from her 29 shillings in rent arrears. When there was no reply, he went to a side window where he knew there was a broken pane of glass. He reached in, pushed aside a dirty old coat that served as a curtain, and peered into the room. Once his eyes adjusted to the dim light, what he saw caused him to jerk backwards, and he fell to the ground in shock. Bowyer picked himself up, fled to the shop nearby where he worked and quickly came back with his employer, John McCarthy, who was both a grocer and Kelly’s landlord. McCarthy put his eye to the window, and then he too recoiled in startled horror.
    McCarthy immediately sent Bowyer to Commercial Street police station to summon help. He soon returned to Miller’s Court with two police officers: Inspectors Walter Beck and Walter Dew. Beck looked in through the same broken window and what he saw appalled him. He pleaded with Dew not to look, but his advice was ignored and Dew took his turn at the window. There, in the darkness of the small room, he saw a terrible sight which he would never forget.
     
    In a ceremony that dates from the time of Magna Carta, the annual Lord Mayor’s Show in London is traditionally held on the second Friday in November. A procession accompanies the new, incoming Lord Mayor to the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand. There, he is presented to the King or Queen and Judges of the High Court, and swears his oath of loyalty to the Crown. The event is a pleasant and enjoyable affair, generally regarded as a welcome break at what is usually a dreary time of year. This particular day, bitter cold, wet and with dark rain-clouds covering the entire sky, was no exception, and even if it was not destined to be enjoyable, it was certainly going to be unforgettable, but for an entirely unexpected reason.
    For a brief time, the atrocities that had plunged Whitechapel into a state of terror that autumn were forgotten in the excitement of the moment. The colour, music and pageantry of the procession were a welcome and diverting distraction for the many thousands of visitors who had come to the East End of London, and who packed the pavements to watch the show. But as the long cortege slowly emerged from the mists on Ludgate Hill, two small boys mischievously joined in at the front. The incoming Lord Mayor, Sir James Whitehead, who led the parade, hung fast to the reins of his startled white horse, and tried hard not to fall as the boys in front of him waved large boards above their heads, danced and jumped about. Gradually, as the procession drew closer, a deathly hush descended on the crowds. The celebratory flags and festival banners were lowered, the music and cheering died away and an ominous silence filled the air.
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