Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

reasons that are also obscure, she moved to Whitechapel, taking a room at 13 Miller’s Court, possibly resuming her old profession as a prostitute – but even this is not certain.
    Tony Williams suggested that in order for Dr John Williams to cure his wife’s infertility, and make a ‘name’ for himself within the medical profession, he embarked upon a radical course of action. On the basis that the end would justify the means, Dr Williams sought out prostitutes whom he had known, and murdered them to plunder their body parts for use in the course of his research. In this argument, Mary Kelly, his former mistress, discovered that he was the murderer and tried to blackmail him, and Dr Williams murdered Kelly purely to prevent her from exposing him.
    A womb or uterus transplant – if that was what Tony Williams was suggesting – would have been a radical, if not highly unlikely, medical procedure for those days, and one that would not be attempted (or repeated?) for more than a century. It was not until 2009 that a Saudi Arabian woman affected by Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser syndrome (born without a uterus) became the first known recipient of another woman’s womb. Even then, complications developed and the womb was removed after 99 days. Dr Mats Brannstrom, a current pioneer of womb transplant surgery, described the operation: “Technically, it is a lot more difficult than transplanting a kidney, liver or heart. The difficulty with it is avoiding haemorrhage and making sure you have long enough blood vessels to connect the womb. You are also working deep down in the pelvis area and it is like working in a funnel.”
    It seemed to my father and me that however gifted and brilliant a surgeon Dr John Williams was, he appears to have been more cautious than cavalier. In a magazine article entitled ‘Medicos under the Microscope’ which appeared in The Gentlewoman on 15 August 1891, the unknown author says of him: “…he has not established by any valuable book, new discovery of brilliant cure, a claim to be considered as the leading London obstetrician.” It is clear that Dr Williams was certainly not the man to attempt such innovative, world-shattering surgery.
     
    Mary Kelly gave birth to a son during the course of her short, but ultimately tragic, marriage, and he lived with her in Miller’s Court, though at some time during the evening before her murder, he was sent to stay with a neighbour or friend for the night. Kelly had therefore proved herself fertile. We think that Lizzie Williams somehow discovered the affair, which we believe was continuing, but by this time the nature of Dr John and Lizzie Williams’s relationship had completely changed.
    Though we do not know if Lizzie Williams was aware of her husband’s many sexual dalliances, and if so, whether she tolerated them or not, she would have found some comfort in her father’s money. But when she lost her inheritance in the spring of 1888, that security was swept away and it was then that her husband’s relationship with Mary Kelly became a source of great alarm because her marriage and entire future had been put at risk. My father and I believe that it was this tragic combination of fateful circumstances that would turn Lizzie Williams, an upper- middle-class , middle-aged woman, into a brutal serial killer.
    Lizzie Williams and her husband had long been recipients of her father’s generosity. Richard Hughes bought them their first house in London’s Harley Street, which he also furnished for them. Although Dr Williams enjoyed a substantial income by Swansea standards, it would not have stretched as far as a home in famous Harley Street. We know that Hughes continued to finance his daughter and son-in-law while they lived in London, but relations between the couple became strained. Lizzie Williams was financially independent of her husband and perhaps she too often let him know it; maybe it was a source of great irritation to Dr Williams that his wife did not depend on him. With her money gone, the balance of power within the relationship shifted. Dr Williams might have made it clear to her that now she was dependent solely on him for her financial support; he could do what he liked – and if that included consorting with other women, then so be it. Perhaps he let it slip that there was another woman in his life, someone more desirable than Lizzie who could bear him a child. Somehow, Lizzie Williams found out that this woman lived in