Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

of a leading industrialist, whose husband was a doctor to royalty, and when in 1894, her husband was made a baronet, she became Lady John Williams.
    Soon after the murders ended, and almost certainly before the end of the year 1888, Lizzie Williams returned alone to live with her family in Wales. Also living with her was Edward R. Morgan, whom we believe was a qualified medical practitioner whose job it was to keep her under constant supervision. She remained with her family, visiting her husband in London from time to time, until Dr John Williams moved back to Wales on his retirement in 1903. When Lizzie moved to her husband’s new home in Llanstephan, she was accompanied by her stepmother, who lived with them, and it was she, Mary Hughes, who now provided the constant care that Lizzie needed for the few remaining years of her life. Lizzie Williams died of cancer in 1915 at the age of sixty-five.
    Dr John Williams unexpectedly gave up all his hospital work within five years of the murders, and his successful private practice ten years after that at the relatively young age of sixty-two years. He cited ‘ill health’ as the reason, but this is highly questionable. Despite devoting almost his entire professional life to the search for a cure for infertility, he was never able to make the discovery he had worked so hard to find.
    In 1908 Dr Williams contributed his vast collection, almost 20,000 Welsh language volumes and books of Celtic interest, to the National Library of Wales, checking every individual book and manuscript first. The shipment weighed about twelve tons, filled 116 chests, and moving it to Aberystwyth over the Christmas period took almost a month. The Hengwrt-Peniarth collection, a private library of ancient Welsh volumes consisting of a further 10,000 books, was delivered directly to the great library of which he became the first president.
    In that same year, the Williamses moved to Snowdon House on Marine Parade in Aberystwyth. He later renamed it ‘Blaenllynant’ after the farm where he had grown up. After his wife’s death, he continued living in the house with Mary Hughes, who had become his close companion.
    Within the National Library of Wales, a marble bust of Sir John Williams by Sir W. Goscome John greets visitors at the entrance hall, while his portrait hangs near the Council Chamber. A large marble statue of Sir John Williams by sculptor Mario Rutelli, which stands at the west end of the Reading Room, watches over the many thousands of people who come to visit the library every year. Sir John died in 1926 at the age of eighty-six.
     
    Richard Hughes, Lizzie’s father, was a director and joint managing partner in the Landore Tinplate works in Swansea. He was one of the wealthiest men in Wales and Lizzie was the apple of his eye. He lavished every expense on her both before and during her marriage. By the spring of 1888, his company had gone into decline; Hughes lost all his money and a third of his workforce. Before the end of the year, everything he owned was charged to the bank. Increasing competition from other factories, and the shift of the tinplate industry from South Wales to the United States had made itself felt; the imposition of the McKinley protective tariff, coupled with competition from an old business rival, Daniel Edwards, dealt the death blow and had a devastating effect on Hughes’s tinplate works. By the end of 1892, he was declared bankrupt and was a ruined man. On 28 October 1903, nine months after Dr John Williams gave up his hospital work and moved back to Wales, Hughes died at Rock House in Morriston at the age of eighty-six. His funeral took place in the town of his birth, Llanbrynmair.
     
    Detective Inspector Frederick George Abberline, appointed by Scotland Yard as co-ordinating officer in the Whitechapel murder investigation, a quiet, methodical watchmaker, never caught the Whitechapel murderer, nor did he ever discover the motive behind the killings. He once considered the idea that the murderer might have been a woman. He had discussed the theory with a colleague at the time and thought that perhaps she might have been a midwife. But Abberline was never able to resolve the issue of Caroline Maxwell’s unwavering testimony that she had both seen and spoken to Mary Kelly on the morning of the murder, several hours after the young woman was known to have been killed.
    In 1890, Inspector Abberline was promoted to Chief Inspector of the London