Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

term of office ran from 1908 to 1916. He had served as Home Secretary from 1892 to 1895, and was – in November 1900 – an opposition M.P.
    The letter concerned Lizzie – Lady Williams – and was, apparently , viciously critical of her. Tony Williams took it as further evidence of the poor state of the marriage, but when my father and I read the letter, we felt it held far deeper significance than that. We also were unable to locate the letter that Margot Asquith had initially sent to Sir John Williams, which was odd, bearing in mind the pains he took to retain his personal correspondence – just like the pages removed from his 1888 diary, so the letter received by Sir John, which might have thrown so much more light on the matter, had disappeared. Nevertheless, we felt that much might be deduced from the content and tenor of Sir John’s letter.
    The letter, dated 25 November 1900, reads in part, as follows:
    Dear Mrs Asquith  
I do not know, nor have I any wish to know, indeed I would rather not know, what my adversary told you of my wife, but I gather that it was something the reverse of complimentary. Fortunately I am almost, if not quite indifferent as to the opinions of most people about me and mine – and on this point I think that I am quite indifferent.
     
    The tone of the paragraph is sharp, but its message is clear, and one can only wonder what, following her recuperation in Wales, Lizzie Williams had said or done to have caused such acerbic comment to be made about her. Whatever it was, Margot Asquith had considered that it was of such a serious and derogatory nature that she was compelled to write to Sir John Williams informing him about it. Clearly, it was both important, and highly critical of Lady Williams; something that Sir John appeared to brush aside and ignore, so as to nip the incident in the bud. But his blithe dismissal obscured a deep unease that was impossible for him to mask. Whatever the content of the letter, we felt that it supported our belief that it was Lizzie Williams who had suffered a breakdown and was now thought to have recovered, but clearly she was far from well.
    Perhaps the next paragraph in Sir John Williams’s reply to Margot Asquith provides a clue as to the content of the letter he had received from her:
    Oddly I have during the last fortnight been troubled beyond measure by the foolish and wicked talk of so-called friends respecting a friend of mine now dead. I have had to speak and write much with a view to try and stop the tongues of scandal which under the circumstances should have been absolutely silent.
     
    To what ‘foolish and wicked talk’ might Sir John have been referring which had troubled him ‘beyond measure’, and who was the ‘friend’ who had died? It was clearly something deeply disturbing and of a distressing personal nature. And what was the ‘scandal’ that he had tried to quell amongst his friends. Perhaps Lizzie Williams had not quite recovered from her breakdown and had either said or done something to illustrate the fact; perhaps she had let slip some detail about the Whitechapel murders that caused someone in her circle of acquaintances to sit up and take notice. Had she, in her troubled state of mind, mentioned that Mary Kelly had been her husband’s friend, or that she had ‘taken care’ of Mary Kelly, or even that Sir John Williams might have been ‘responsible’ for the murders, and that was the scandal he was trying to quell?
    If so, it might have been at this point that Sir John realised that he and his wife’s lives had changed forever; that Lizzie might never make a full recovery from her breakdown. Even if she did, she would likely continue to suffer the mood swings and depressions that her infertility had given rise to, and that would be something that would affect her all her life; though all the current medical evidence suggests that, with the passage of time, a feeling of profound sadness would replace more emotive thoughts. If she were allowed to remain in London, there would always be a risk that she would reveal something more about the murders, and next time the tongues of scandal might not be so easily silenced. In such an inconceivable event, the consequences that might follow would be far too dreadful to contemplate….
    Alternatively, had Margot Asquith discussed the issue with her husband Herbert Asquith perhaps, who was, of course, connected with the highest levels of government? Is it possible that,