Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

the boards the boys were waving was the latest newspaper headline:
        Another
Whitechapel
    Murder
    The Star
     
    Detective Inspector Frederick George Abberline, Scotland Yard’s best and most experienced detective, and officer appointed to coordinate the murder investigation, arrived at Miller’s Court at 11.30 a.m., soon after the alarm was raised. He was accompanied by Detective Sergeant George Godley, who had been assigned to assist him following the discovery of the body of Mary Ann Nichols ten weeks before. There they joined Inspectors Walter Beck and Walter Dew, Dr George Bagster Phillips, the police surgeon for the Metropolitan Police, who had arrived 15 minutes before, Thomas Bowyer and John McCarthy.
    Abberline requested tracker dogs – bloodhounds – to pursue the murderer’s scent, though recent trials on Hampstead Heath to assess their effectiveness had produced inconclusive results. While they waited for the bloodhounds, Burgho and Barnaby, to arrive, Abberline ordered cordons to be placed at the entrance to Miller’s Court. These were to prevent the crowds, who were now abandoning the Lord Mayor’s procession in their thousands, from descending on the crime scene. These onlookers were already blocking Dorset Street, and hundreds more continued to arrive as the news of yet another murder spread.
    By noon, forty more police had arrived at Miller’s Court, and while some struggled to hold back the quickly growing crowd, others questioned witnesses, took statements and searched the small paved yard of the court, the seven tenement houses, the dustbin and the narrow passageway that led past McCarthy’s shop, for evidence, clues and traces of blood.
    It was not until early afternoon – more than two hours after Bowyer’s gruesome discovery – that the detectives learned that the bloodhounds would not be coming after all. Their use had been discontinued just over a week earlier, unbeknown to the detectives, and they were no longer available. At 1.30 p.m. the door of 13 Miller’s Court was forced open, and Inspector Abberline, D.S. George Godley, Inspectors Walter Beck and Walter Dew followed Dr George Phillips, and squeezed into Mary Kelly’s single-room apartment. They yanked away the dirty old coat from the window, allowing light to flood into the room. What Bowyer, McCarthy, Beck and Dew had glimpsed through the window was bad enough, but in bright daylight the scene was infinitely worse. All five men were horrified, and some of them became physically ill at the ghastly sight that confronted them.
    The dwelling was small – no more than five or six paces from wall to wall. It contained an old wooden bed, a small bedside table, a larger table, a cupboard, two chairs and a washstand. A faded reproduction of ‘The Fisherman’s Widow’ by the English artist Frank Bramley hung from a nail above the mantelpiece in what might have been half-hearted attempt to lift the young woman’s spirits in such dismal surroundings. Given the painting’s subject matter – a sad-looking woman staring at a large wooden memorial cross in a desolate graveyard – it seemed unlikely to succeed.
    Dr Thomas Bond, another police surgeon, arrived at Miller’s Court at 2.00 p.m. and, together, the two doctors examined the victim’s remains while the four detectives searched the room for clues, and continued their fingertip search of the court.
    With forensic detection in its infancy, Scotland Yard’s Fingerprint Bureau yet to be established, and effective DNA profiling still more than a century away, the detectives had little more to assist them than their own eyes and gut instinct. As they searched the room, they noticed that a fire in the hearth had burned so fiercely that it had melted the handle and spout of a kettle standing on the hob. Abberline probed the large grey mound of cold ashes in the fireplace. As he prodded and poked, a piece of curved wire emerged; it was about eight inches long and attached to it was a small piece of charred material, the remains of a woman’s felt hat. Further investigation of the ashes produced two more pieces of material. The larger, also burnt at the edges, twelve inches square and dark brown in colour, was all that remained of a woman’s cotton twill skirt. A smaller piece of black velvet might have been the remains of a cape.
    The police brought in a professional photographer, Joe Martin of Cannon Street Road, to photograph the remains of the victim.