Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

implausible. That these were required for the purpose of his research, when he had an almost inexhaustible supply of women patients at the hospitals where he worked, made this hypothesis impossible to believe.
    From start to finish, all the evidence pointed directly to the suspect my father had identified. Not once were we dissuaded that we were wrong. On the contrary, at every turn our suspicions were confirmed that we had identified the murderer and discovered the motive for her terrible crimes.
    That Jack the Ripper, author of five Whitechapel murders in the autumn of 1888 was not a man but a woman, has now, we believe, been proven beyond reasonable doubt. That she was the outwardly respectable, upper-middle-class, middle-aged Victorian housewife whom we identified at the outset, is certain.

EPILOGUE
     
     
    M ary Elizabeth Ann Williams, whom her husband called ‘Lizzie’, was the only daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Richard Hughes, who indulged her to excess. She was accustomed to having anything and everything her father’s money could buy. She married a brilliant, capable and ambitious doctor, a specialist in gynaecology, and it was her family’s money that provided the foundation of his very successful career. But, unfortunately, they could never have the child they wanted because, by a tragic twist of fate, Lizzie was infertile, and no amount of money could change that fact.
    As time passed by, Lizzie Williams feared for her marriage. Not only was she afraid that she would lose her husband to another woman, she worried that she would forfeit her social standing too. When her father lost his fortune, Lizzie lost her security, and became dependent on a husband who no longer loved her as he once did. She thought that he might leave her, perhaps even father a child by Mary Kelly who had proved herself fertile. It was therefore the green-ey’d monster of jealousy, and fear for her very future that became the catalyst that drove her to commit murder.
    Of the many people who have been considered as suspects down through the years, Lizzie Williams alone had all the attributes that the Whitechapel murderer required in order to accomplish, and get away with, the terrible crimes. She was intelligent, confident and determined, yet cautious and careful too. She possessed a sufficient knowledge of anatomy and the requisite theoretical surgical skills both to kill her victims and, when necessary, to extract the organ she wanted to possess – the uterus. The coroner in the Annie Chapman inquest, Wynne Baxter, noted: “The organ had been taken by one who knew where to find it.”
    Lizzie Williams had access to surgical knives. The Divisional Police Surgeon, Dr George Bagster Phillips, an expert witness in the inquest, gave his opinion that the weapon used in four out of the five murders was “very sharp… probably with a thin, narrow blade at least six to eight inches long; perhaps a small amputating knife.” The Williams household also owned a shoemaker’s knife “well ground down”, which expert opinion considered had been used in the Stride murder, because such a knife was discovered among the personal possessions of Dr Williams held by the National Library of Wales.
    Of great significance was the possibility that Dr John Williams had a direct connection with at least three of the murder victims, Nichols (perhaps), Eddowes and, crucially, Kelly, and so, by indirect association, did his wife.
    And she was a woman. Since everyone – the police, the press and the public – were looking for a man, Lizzie Williams was ‘invisible’. She was able to come and go at will; she walked along alleyways and passages, roads and high-streets, through police cordons, past constables and detectives wherever and whenever she wished, always unnoticed.
    But, most significantly of all, she had the motive to commit murder.
     
    As a child, Lizzie was gifted at both acting and music. At the age of fifteen, she won a competition at an Eisteddfod for which she was given the Bardic name of Morfydd Glantawe. At the age of twenty, she was given the honour of awarding prizes at the 1870 Eisteddfod. She was an accomplished organist and accompanied the choir in her local chapel, Libanus. While Lizzie Williams is now largely forgotten, Morfydd Street and Glantawe Street still exist in Morriston, the town of her birth. However, no more than a handful of people living there now know that these street names honour the gifted daughter