Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

Already a veteran of three photographic murder assignments in Whitechapel that autumn at Scotland Yard’s request, Martin produced a pin-sharp image of his latest, and most grotesque, subject. It is one of only two known likenesses of Mary Jane Kelly.
    When the photographer had left, the doctors continued their lengthy examination of the corpse and began to reconstruct the young woman’s body. They collected the pieces of skin, as well as the flesh and organs which had been ripped from the victim and strewn across the bed and about the room. Every body part, no matter how small, was carefully retrieved and replaced in and on the corpse in the approximate position it would have occupied in life.
    One of the doctors also raked through the ashes in the grate, but there was nothing left to find. The corpse, sewn together as well as it could be, was removed to the mortuary in the late afternoon. But despite a thorough search of the room, the court, and the passageway to Dorset Street, one organ could not be located. The victim’s heart was missing.
    The stub of a solitary candle stood on top of a broken wine glass placed on the small bedside table. Lying across a chair was Mary Kelly’s underwear, but her outer clothes were nowhere to be found. The damaged kettle, coupled with the large pile of ashes, provided confirmation of an intense blaze. Following a two-day investigation at the murder scene, the detectives reasoned that the murderer must have burned Kelly’s clothes in order to generate more light to see by as he carried out his terrible work, though they were at a loss to explain why he had not burned her underwear also. Afterwards, the murderer had left and made good his escape. It was a rational enough conclusion to draw.
    And it would have been, except that there is no record of anyone seeing Mary Kelly wearing the hat and clothes, the remnants of which were found in her fireplace, and for the strange testimony of Mrs Caroline Maxwell. She gave a written statement to the police, and later testified under oath at the inquest which commenced on Monday, 12 November, that she had both seen Mary Kelly and spoken with her on the morning of the murder: the woman whose features were obscured by the fog; the woman who was wearing a green bodice, a brown linsey skirt and a red knitted crossover shawl; the woman who had spoken with a Welsh accent….
    As to the time of Mary Kelly’s death, the police investigation turned up two witnesses, both residents of Miller’s Court, who had heard a cry of ‘Murder!’ just before 4.00 a.m. Dr Thomas Bond estimated Kelly’s time of death as between 1.00 a.m. and 2.00 a.m. Dr George Bagster Phillips estimated the time of her death as between 4.45 a.m. and 5.45 a.m. However, the latter gave his opinion that a body ripped apart in such a cold room would lose heat far more quickly than a victim whose body had not been so extensively mutilated. That morning the outside temperature had dropped to almost 39 degrees Fahrenheit, so it had been quite cold.
    Whether Mary Kelly died as early as 1.00 a.m., or at 4.00 a.m. when the two independent witnesses heard what may have been her last scream for help, or even as late as 5.45 a.m., which Dr Phillips estimated as the latest time of death, it is certain that she was already dead by the time of Caroline Maxwell’s encounter with the woman she believed to be Mary Kelly at 8.30 a.m. that same morning.
    This anomaly in the evidence has never been satisfactorily explained. The dilemma would haunt Inspectors Frederick Abberline and Walter Dew to the end of their days. Philip Sugden, in The Complete History of Jack the Ripper , described it as, “an unanswered riddle”. Stephen Knight, in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution , said it “is one of the enduring mysteries of the case”.
    In its edition published on 10 November, the day after the murder, an editorial in The Times ran: “The murders, so cunningly continued, are carried out with a completeness which altogether baffles investigators. Not a trace is left of the murderer, and there is no purpose in the crime to afford the slightest clue…”.
    During the course of Mary Kelly’s murder, and the subsequent mutilations to her body, the murderer would, according to the doctors who examined the corpse, have been covered in a great deal of blood, especially on his hands and clothing. Near the side of the building in which the murdered woman lived, and fixed to the end wall, was a