Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

Rembrandt’s calibre could sign his artworks with a single letter, Lizzie Williams could also have done so.
    But again, we asked ourselves, what did the letter V stand for and why was it inverted? Was it because of the position Lizzie Williams found herself in when she made the four oblique incisions? We did not think so. There is no medical, or indeed any evidence, to suggest that she caused the wounds from any position other than one she had adopted for the murder – at her victim’s side. So what exactly was the unusual shape, the inverted V, which does not resemble any of the letters in our own Roman alphabet?
    The Greek alphabet however (which commences Alpha, Beta, Gamma), which has been in continual use since the eighth century BC, consists of twenty-four letters. The eleventh letter, in uppercase of this ancient alphabet, is known as ‘Lambda’, and is identical to an inverted V and it represents the letter ‘L’.
    Had Lizzie Williams left her mark in blood by signing the initial letter of her pet-name Lizzie on Catherine Eddowes’s face using the Greek symbol Lambda – ^. While it is indeed possible, and almost certain that she would have been familiar with the Greek alphabet, it seemed to us too remote a possibility. In any case, we were unable to come up with a plausible reason as to why she would have carved the same letter twice. Yet we felt we were on to something and thought that the marks must have some secret, or hidden, meaning.
    As we pondered the matter further and stared hard at the two shapes recorded in Foster’s mortuary sketch, something unexpectedly revealed itself. It seemed to us that Lizzie might have signed her work, but in a manner which was not immediately obvious, and that would not have emerged in the decades that followed unless searched for, and was quite incomprehensible to the detectives involved in the murder investigation.
    Viewed separately, perhaps an inch and a half apart on either side of Eddowes’s nose and in almost exact alignment, the two shapes cut into Catherine Eddowes’s cheeks have no obvious meaning. They merely formed part of her terrible facial injuries:
     
    But we wondered, if they were not in fact two separate shapes, but component parts of the same character. So we brought them together, and when we did a familiar and clearly recognizable letter or initial quickly emerged:

     
    A closer inspection of Foster’s sketch, though roughly drawn, shows that the shape on the left cheek, and perhaps the second one to have been carved, is actually rounded at the top, so the letter appears more like an M than ever:
     
    Had the elusive killer, who confounded Scotland Yard’s best detectives, and who was famed for leaving no clues at the scenes of any of the murders, actually left an obscure clue behind, by carving the initial letter of her first (baptismal) name, ‘Mary,’ into the cheeks of the woman she believed was her final victim? Had she signed her ‘canvas’ in the manner of an artist, to signify that she was now satisfied that her work was finished? While we cannot be absolutely certain that we are correct in this hypotheses, the answer may well be ‘yes’.
     
    As the murderer prepared to leave the scene of the crime, the dim yellow light from a lamp, such as a police constable might hold, was directed into the misty darkness from Church Passage at the far end of the square. But its beam was weak and quite unable to reach the corner where Lizzie Williams was hidden in the shadows with her victim. A moment later, it disappeared as its owner, P.C. James Harvey, walked on. Even if Harvey had seen her, it is possible that he dismissed her from his mind, because when the crime was later detected, the hunt was on for a man. Harvey, of course, was the officer who was later dismissed from the police force for reasons that are unknown.
    Lizzie Williams then gathered up her grotesque bundle, and silently stole away. The most likely route for her escape was via Church Passage because the constable with the lamp had gone, and it was the most direct route to safety. This would allow her to reach Duke Street quickly, and from there it was merely a stone’s throw to Aldgate where there were people with whom she could mingle, and swiftly disappear.
    What Lizzie Williams might have done with the organs she was carrying – the uterus and left kidney of the woman she believed to be her husband’s mistress – is open to conjecture. Also subject to