BLOODY JACK Chapter FIfteen

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I believe the first repudiation of Dr. George Phillips' opinions about the murder of Annie Chapman appeared when the inquest reconvened on Wednesday, 12 September, 1888. The first witness was John Richardson, eldest son of Mrs. Amelia Richardson. Between 4:45 am and 4:50 am on Saturday, 8 September, before reporting to his job as a porter at the Spitafields market, John stopped by his mother's residence at 29 Hanbury Street to check on her basement workshop, from which tools had been stolen weeks earlier. 

The first light of dawn had appeared just after 4:50 that morning - sunrise would be at 5:23 am. And standing on the threshold of the back door, John could clearly see the padlock,  just six feet away on the basement door, was still snapped shut, and the door secure. He did not need to move closer. But then John did something crucial. 

He sat on the top step, with his feet resting in the yard, and struggled to cut some leather off his shoes, which were crimping his toes. He sat on the step, John estimated, for “two minutes at most”. But it was a crucial two minutes. It was light enough, John said, that he could see the entire back yard clearly. And with his head down, he could certainly see 6 inches to his right.

He insisted, “I could not have failed to notice the deceased had she been lying there, then.” And if she was not there, then - within 6 inches of John Richardson - at 4:50 that morning, then Dr. Phillips was wrong when he said Dark Annie died between 3:30 and 4:30 that morning,

John's mother, Amelia Richardson, then testified that the leather apron found in the back yard belonged to her younger son. She had washed it under the backyard tap on Thursday and left it out to dry. It was still lying there on Saturday morning, and had nothing to do with the murder, despite lurid press reports the killer had left it behind. 

This supported the next witness, John Pizer, a shoemaker from Mulberry Street. He'd been arrested for his own safety by Detective Sergeant William Thicke – who earned his nickname when a prostitute once greeted him, "“Why fuck me, if it isn't Johnny Upright!”. 

The terrified cobbler, John Pizer,  was well known about Whitechapel as “Leather Apron”. Despite headlines nicknaming the killer “Leather Apron”,  the police had cleared Pizer, despite his reputation for threatening prostitutes with knives and telling them "I'll rip you!" He was testifying now to “vindicate my character to the world at large” -  and to discourage the vigilante street gangs which had been threatening to cut his throat. He had not actually murdered any women, he insisted. And with no mention of his predilections to the jury, the inquest moved on. The next witness returned to events that did happen on the morning of 8 September, 1888. And again, Dr. Phillip's reputation did not come out well in what they saw and heard.

As the clock atop the Black Eagle Brewery - owned since the 17th Century by the Truman family - had just struck 5:30 a.m. - 7 minutes after sunrise - as.... 

...Mrs. Elizabeth Long (above)  was walking south on Brick Lane. She then turned west on Hanbury Street, heading to the Spitsfield Market, on Commercial Street. 

Just before reaching Number 29 Hanbury,  Elizabeth passed a man and woman in loud conversation on "the building side of the sidewalk".  They were facing each other and Mrs. Long had a good look at the woman's face.  After viewing the body in the morgue, Elizabeth had positively identified her as Annie Chapman.

The man had his back to Mrs. Long, but she described him as not much more than 5 feet tall (Annie Chapman was just 5 feet), about 40 years old, wearing a dark overcoat and a brown deerstalker hat. He was, Mrs. Long thought,  foreign looking with a dark complexion and a “shabby genteel” appearance.  She distinctly heard the man say -  in a “foreign accent” -  “Will you?” To which she heard Dark Annie respond, “Yes.”  At the time Elizabeth took little notice of the two. Later, when news of the murder spread like wildfire through the market, Elizabeth Long realized what she had seen and heard might be important. So she contacted the police.

That same morning, carpenter Albert Cadoche was hurrying to the privy in the back yard of 27 Hanbury Street. He was suffering from a UTI – a urinary tract infection. A few painful moments later he was returning to the back door when he distinctly heard a woman say, “No”. Albert also took little notice, and was not even certain which direction the voice had come from. But UTI's being what they are, within a few minutes Albert was making the same round trip again. This time, on his way to the outhouse, he heard something thud against the 5 foot high fence dividing the back yard of number 27 from the yard of number 29. 

A few moments later, as Albert was walking down Fournier street (above), he saw the clock atop the Christ's Church Spitafields tower (below). He said it read 5:32 am. 

The times did not match up, and they are all at odds with Dr. Phillip's time chart. But... If Elizabeth Long did see Annie Chapman and her killer reaching a business arraignment closer to 5:15 a.m....And if Albert Cadoche heard the thud against the fence about 5:25 a.m....And if the Christ's Church clock (above) actually read closer to 5:42 a.m...Then Annie Chapman died about 5:30 a.m.. And that would have left the murderer 15 to 20 minutes to mutilate the body and leave the house with his bloody trophy before John Davis discovered the dead woman. Could both these witnesses be that far off in their timing?

Before the second half of the 20^th century all clocks were mechanical, and effected by wear, temperature, humidity, maintenance, and their purpose. The clock in the Spitafields Church was a call to prayer. The Black Eagle Brewery clock (above, right)  was designed to make the name ubiquitous in Whitechapel. Neither clock was meant to be accurate, in the modern meaning of that word. And the witnesses did not carry their own watches. To them, time was not a minute by minute measurement of their lives. Besides, the important thing about all three stories is not the exact time they occurred, but the place in which they occurred.

The back yard of 29 Hanbury Street (above) was empty when John Richardson left about 5 or 10 minutes before 5:00 a.m.  While he was there Annie Chapman was still alive - at least half an hour after Dr. Phillips said she must already be dead.  But she must have been within half a mile of the spot, because she was found there dead, just before 6:00 am. And...

Either the killer left the yard by climbing over the 5 foot high fence and then running between yards (above)  – odd enough behavior to attract attention in a crime ridden area.  Or, the stranger walked out the front door, something which would attract no more notice at Number 29 Hanbury Street then a figure sleeping on the stairs of a building in George Yard.

So it is likely Annie Chapman entered the backyard of number 29 Hanbury Street (above) between 5:00 am and 5:30 am - which roughly supports both John Richardson's and Elizabeth Long's stories. Dark Annie was found dead in the yard between 5:30 and 6:00 am, which roughly fits Albert Cadoche's time line. But none of the witnesses support Dr. Phillips estimate.

Coroner Wayne Baxter (above) would later say at the inquest, “It is true that Dr. Phillips thinks that when he saw the body at 6.30  the deceased had been dead at least two hours, but he admits that the coldness of the morning and the great loss of blood may affect his opinion; and if the evidence of the other witnesses be correct, Dr. Phillips has miscalculated the effect of those forces...”  In fact, the good doctor had been recalled on Wednesday, 19 September. He was pressed to provide more details about the mutilations, and resisted until all women and children had left the room – children? At a grisly murder inquest? And did the Victorian doctor think women were unaware of the existence of a womb within their own bodies?

It is understandable  that Dr. George Phillips (above) might be trying to protect evidence only the killer would know, but the jury wanted to know, and Dr. Phillips was forced to reply. 

The horrific details of the cuts to the vagina and bladder went on the record - and in the newspapers.  But he was able to protect that the womb had been removed, saying only, “One of the organs was entirely absent from the body”. And then Dr. Phillips added, “The appearance of the cut surfaces indicated that the instrument used must have been very sharp, and (the killer) showed a certain amount of anatomical knowledge.”

Combined with his testimony of Monday, 10 September (above) - “Obviously the work was that of an expert...” - and his belief the weapon was “...a doctor's knife, or the kind of knife used in a slaughter house or by a butcher”,  makes Dr. Phillips the  “ad fontem” - the original source - of Jack the Ripper as a professional man, someone – pardon the expression – a cut above the mass of Whitechapel's   uneducated working poor.

And from this bit of Victorian bias was born the century long industry of the killer as a doctor, an actor, a painter, an intellectual, a detective or even a member of royalty. It made a lot of money for a lot of people, most as yet unborn in 1888.  But it disguised the killer who moved about Whitechapel as only a resident of Whitechapel could - unseen because he was unremarkable.

And Dr. Phillips offered yet another misdirection to the mystery. When asked by Coroner Wayne Baxter how long it would have taken to performed the mutilations, Dr. Phillips said, “I myself could not have performed all the injuries I saw on that woman, even without a struggle, under a quarter of an hour. If I had done it in the deliberate manner usual with a surgeon, it would probably have taken me the best part of an hour. The conclusion I came to was that the whole object of the operation was to obtain possession of a certain portion of the body.”

It added to the mystery. It enforced the image of the killer as a calculating fiend. It implied he was searching for one particular organ - the womb. But was it not more likely the killer sliced that organ from Annie Chapman's body without knowing what specific organs he was removing?  Or perhaps that he had learned about dissection not at a university but by mutilating small animals while still a child? Then he would not be a doctor fiend, or a slaughterhouse mad man, but rather just a mad man, what modern criminology would call a disorganized serial killer,  who left his physiological diagnosis on display at the murder scene.

At the final session of the inquest into the death of the second victim, Polly Nichols...and after 4 days of testimony in the still open inquest of victim three  Annie Chapman....and with the case of Martha Tabaum still unsolved, Coroner Baxter seemed to sense the horror that was yet  to come.  “I suggest,” he told the jury in the Nichol's case , “...these... women may have been murdered by the same man with the same object...and having failed in the open street he tries again, within a week...in a more secluded place....but one thing is very clear - that a murder of a most atrocious character has been committed.” 

And would be committed again, and again, and again.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Thirteen

 

I can almost feel the panic, over a century later, felt by those who responded to the murder on that Saturday morning, 6 September, 1888 . The sad back yard of the run down tenement on Hanbury Street was separated by less than a half mile and just a week from the dark lonely murder scene on Buck's Row. And it seemed obvious the same maniac had been responsible for both horrors.

After the murder of Martha Tabrem, the newspapers had called for more lighting around private residences. And after Polly Nichols' murder the Coroner's jury and the newspapers had both called for more gas lights in the dark public street corners of Whitechapel. But this poor woman, who ever she was, had been murdered and butchered in the early light of morning. Logic seemed to offer no solution for this horror. 

Like a blood stain soaking into the victim's worn clothing, the horror born in one man's tortured soul, was now being sucked up by every civilian gawker, uniformed constable and plain clothes detective in the Whitechapel division. It began to touch Inspector Joseph Luniss Chandler before six that morning,  from a window of the Commercial Street station (above) he watched two men running up Hanbury Street. He admitted feeling the first faint sick about of they might be bringing with them. 

He was the officer who responded at 6:02 am, to the men's report. Accompanied by several constables, Chandler arrived at 29 Hanbury to discover a crowd already jamming the narrow hallway. He ordered the hall cleared, sent an officer back to Commercial Street to fetch the ambulance cart and reinforcements, and another officer to cover the body with cloth bags, and dispatched yet a third constable to fetch Dr George Bagster Phillips, the Divisional Police Surgeon.

Over his 20 year career as a doctor, the modest Dr. Phillips had developed a "a brusque, quick manner", and a self assurance in his own judgement.  He stepped into the yard at about 6:20 that morning. Removing the covering bags, he noted the woman's “...left arm was placed across the left breast. The legs were drawn up, the feet resting on the ground, and the knees turned outwards.” The victim's face was swollen and bruised, and turned toward the fence. The tip of her swollen tongue was between her teeth, which seemed intact. But below the waist, “The body was terribly mutilated...”

Doctor Phillips noted, "the body was cold except that there was a certain heat, under the intestines",  but he  took no temperatures. He added, "Stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but it was commencing…the blood had mainly flowed from the neck, which was well clotted."  Dr. Phillips estimated the time of death to have occurred at least 2 or 3 hours earlier, or between 3:30 and 4:30 am. The doctor observed a handkerchief tied around the dead woman's throat. But below the cloth were two deep slashes, “...jagged and...right round the neck” 

On the fence next to the body he noticed what might be smears of blood. He thought the weapon which had created all the injuries might have been “a very sharp knife with a thin narrow blade...at least 6 to 8 inches in length”, perhaps a bayonet, a doctor's knife, or the kind of knife used in a slaughter house or by a butcher. But Doctor Phillips saw no evidence of a struggle in the yard, and he was certain the dead woman had come into the back yard under her own power.

At her feet, and between her legs, Dr. Phillips (above) saw a piece of muslin cloth, on which were an envelope corner, which had evidently been folded and used to carry 2 pills, which were lying next to the paper. Next to them was a comb, still wrapped in paper. It occurred to Phillips the items had been placed there rather carefully, “that is to say, arranged there.” He also noticed a leather apron laying on the ground near a water faucet projecting from the rooming house wall. Inspector Chandler noted the items and collected them.

As soon as the ambulance cart (above) arrived, Dr. Phillips ordered the body be removed. The Bobbies lifted the mutilated corpse into a wicker coffin, which they used to carry the dead woman through the hall, out onto Hanbury Street. The doctor walked with the Bobbies pushing the ambulance cart to Brick Lane, then across to Montague Street, followed by a crowd growing in numbers and agitation. They arrived at the Eagle street entrance to the Montague Street Mortuary a few moments before 7:00 am.

The gates locked the crowd outside (above), while the party waited for Robert Mann to unlock the shed. Once the body had been transferred to the examination table, Dr. Phillips issued specific instructions to the chastised attendant, Mr. Mann,  that this body was not to be touched until he – the doctor - had returned to preform the autopsy. A few moments later, Inspector Chandler arrived, and issued identical instructions to Mann. Leaving Constable Barnes to keep an eye on the crowd at the Eagle Street gate, Dr. Phillips headed to the London Hospital to see patients, while Inspector Chandler returned to the Commercial Street station to begin preparing his investigation.

None of the warnings did any good, of course. Within two hours a lowly clerk at the Whitechapel Workhouse had dispatched two guardians (nurses' assistants) to the mortuary to wash all evidence off the body. Neither the staff nor population of the Work House understood that the offense in handling the corpse of Polly Nichols had not been that men had washed a woman's body, but that the body had been washed at all. But nowhere does it seem that any one bothered to explain that to them.

The London Daily News did its best to make up for not having a Sunday edition to report the murder and sell papers. Their report, on Monday, 10 September began, “On Saturday one more crime was added to the ghastly series of Whitechapel murders. Just before six that morning a woman was found murdered and mutilated at a lodging house in Hanbury street...The head...had been nearly severed from her body by one stroke of a sharp knife, and her mangled remains had been disposed about her in a way that suggested a delight in the slaughter for the slaughter's sake....inflicted nameless indignities on the dead body, indignity upon indignity, horror upon horror, and got clean away. The house teemed with life; it was near the hour of rising...yet no human being heard a cry or an alarm. The swiftness of it, the perfect mystery of it, are heightening effects of terror. The wildest imagination has never combined in fiction so many daring improbabilities as have here been accomplished in fact.”

That same day The Daily Telegraph reported, “Mrs. Fiddymont, wife of the proprietor of the Prince Albert public-house...half a mile from the scene of the murder, states that at seven o'clock yesterday morning...there came into...a man whose rough appearance frightened her. He had on a brown stiff hat, a dark coat, and no waistcoat...he asked for "half a pint of four ale."....there were blood-spots on the back of his right hand...his shirt was torn. As soon as he had drunk the ale, which he swallowed at a gulp, he went out... she slipped out the other door, and watched him as he went towards Bishopsgate-street...” The wild eyed mystery man was last seen heading for Halfmoon street.

The Telegraph then added, “A number of sensational stories are altogether without corroboration, such, for instance, as the tale that writing was seen on the wall of No. 29: "I have now done three, and intend to do nine more and give myself up." One version says some such threats as "Five - Fifteen more and I give myself up," was written upon a piece of paper that was picked up. There has also been a good deal said about "Leather Apron”,.....So much has been said of "Leather Apron" that, when it became known that a leather apron had been discovered in the yard, the people immediately associated it with the supposed culprit. There were three aprons, in fact, and they belonged to workmen, who have no connection with the case.”

The East End News described the murders as, “...so distinctly outside the ordinary range of human experience that it has created a kind of stupor extending far beyond the district where the murders were committed...” The paper then added, “So many stories of "suspicious" incidents have cropped up since the murder, some of them evidently spontaneously generated by frantic terror, and... pointing in contrary directions, that....If the perpetrator...is not speedily brought to justice, it will be not only humiliating, but also an intolerable perpetuation of the danger.”  The people of Whitechapel were beginning to see Leather Aprons on every street corner,

The London Evening News reported a conversation between “workmen” that seemed to hint at revolution brewing behind the slaughter. It was alleged a workman asked, “...what the police is about?" This was met with the sneering observation of a companion, "Well, you must be a fool to ask a question of that sort. Why, the 'perlice' is too busy looking arter the changing of bus hosses in the West-end, and a-watchin' o' Trafalgar Square, to care what becomes of poor devils like us." The murmurs of approval which greeted this homely satire showed that the feeling towards the guardians of the peace is one of distrust...”.

The crimes were so horrible, the Daily Telegraph was eager for speculation, “It is a positive relief”, they wrote, “to escape from the fact to the theory of the crime.... No person could murder at these risks, and for these gains, with any sense of purpose in his acts as purpose is known to the sane. A monster is abroad. The murders defy all rules of motive...There was no more waste of effort than there is in the killing of a sheep. There could have been no more pity, or anger, or violent passion of any sort. The police have to find for us one of the most extraordinary monsters known to the history of mental and spiritual disease, a monster whose skull will have to be cast for all the surgical museums of the world. No other theory is admissible.”

Against such a loud and universal cry for relief, it seemed neither science nor religion, nor the Metropolitan Police, could explain the murderer, nor stop him.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Twelve

 

I am  amazed the Italian Bishop Mellitus (above) thought he could convert the Saxons of England to Christianity. The first step in his master plan, begun the year he arrived in London - 604 C.E. - was to remake a Roman era temple dedicated to the goddess Diana into a church honoring St. Paul. 

In response the pagan Saxons chased Mellitius right out of London. Then they burned down his new church. Although they rejected the new religion, not burning down the Bishop himself might be described as Saxon religious tolerance. 

In any case, it was not until 1087, that William the Conqueror's Catholic confessor, Bishop Maurice, began the building of St. Paul's Cathedral, (above), a fortress which would stand for another 600 years - as proof in stone that Christianity had conquered London. 

St. Paul's Cathedral adopted a policy of growth by meiosis – the mother church granting “easements” for the devout to take most communions in off shoot chapels close to their homes, a practice practiced until London was over flowing with chapels pressed right up against the city walls.

In 1250 just the second easement was granted for a chapel outside Aldegate (Old Gate),  in the parish of Stepney. When it is completed in 1286 this church was dedicated to Jesus' mother, Mary, and it was called St. Mary Matfel – matfel being a Saxon term for a new mother. Because this small house of worship, and its larger 1329 replacement (above), had walls of common white Kent chalk rubble held together with white plaster, and was clearly visible from the Conqueror’s Tower of London and the city walls, it came to be called The White Chapel. And thus the parish earned its name.

With time William's house of Normandy was defeated by the Plantaganents, who were followed by the houses of Lancaster, York and the Tudors, under whom the Catholic St. Mary's was rededicated as an Anglican St. Mary's.  In 1673 “Whitechapel by Aldgate”, was rebuilt with red brick in a neoclassical Roman style. And in June of 1649, buried in the graveyard of this “Whitechapel” (above), five months after he had chopped off the head of Charles Stuart, King of England and Scotland,  was Richard Brandon, a “rag man on Rosemary Lane” and Charles' public executioner.

The Stuarts were followed by the House of Orange and then the German House of Hanover - whose most illustrious Queen - until modern times -  was Victoria, the Empress of India. The white chapel, at the junction of Adler Street, White Church Lane, and Whitechapel High Street, was rebuilt again in 1877 as a Victorian Gothic church, again with red brick (above). 

But three years later, on the night of Thursday, 26 August, 1880 a fire gutted the sanctuary (above), sparing only the bell tower and the vestry.

The red brick white chapel reopened again in December of 1882, with pews for 1,600 worshipers and an external pulpit to sermonize to the tide of sinners breaking against its walls. It is interesting to note that despite the image of Victorian piety , an 1881 survey of churches showed that on any given Sunday morning, only 1 in 3 residence of England were sitting in pews, Catholic or Protestant

It was just across the High Street from this church, on the corner of Whitechapel and Osborn (above),  that Emily Holland met the inebriated Polly Nichols early in morning of Friday 31 August 1888. And it was the bell in the 200 foot tower of this church which interrupted their conversation. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Polly Nichols, it tolls for thee.

The parish of Whitechapel in 1888 was bisected by two primary roads. However, this being London, both were drawn using a whimsical compass, and both were badly congested with traffic and horse manure. Whitechapel Road, or the high street, ran roughly a mile from Aldegate east northeast past the white chapel and the London Hospital. 

Curving parallel north of Whitechapel was Wentworth street (above), which after crossing Brick Lane became Old Montague Street, at the eastern end of which was located the mortuary, just around the corner from the Whitechapel Workhouse.

The next primary (sort of) street north of Wentworth and Montague Street was the disjointed Hanbury Street (above), named after local brewer,  Sampson Hanbury.  The west end of the dis-articulatied Hanbury began at the wide east/west Commercial Street, a block north of the Spitafield Markets -  operating since the middle ages - and Christ's Church street.

After crossing Brick Lane, Hanbury jogged south at Spital Street, and after Greaterox Street it jogged south again, converging toward Old Montague Street, before terminating, at it's eastern end, just south of Buck's Row. A decade earlier, Hanbury had been four separate named streets, and they had not been straightened or widened, with the name change - merely another example of the geographic anarchy which results by haphazardly imposing order upon preexisting anarchy.

Sandwiched north of Whitechapel street and between that and Hanbury street was the infamous “Wicked Quarter Mile”, jammed with dark dangerous poverty plagued short side streets like Bushfield, Dorest, White, Princelet, Fournier, Henege, Chicksand and Fashion Streets and Petticoat Lane,  all little more than a block long, all packed with human beings like so many sardines - such as Mrs. "Flower-on-the-Flock", who was infamous for her abilities with a knife.

Along most of its contorted length, Hanbury Street was crowded with cheaply built apartment houses, called 8 by 4's, which had replaced older grander slums. 

Their front doors opened on a hallway running the length of one side of the building. Toward the rear, a staircase provided access to the higher floors – 4 in all, ground level and 1 through 3 - while a doorway (above, right), provided access to the rear yard and an outhouse and 1 or 2 sheds, Two doors along each hall provided access to the apartments, each a single room of 8 feet square.

Typical were the eight rooms at 29 Hanbury Street (above, center), one block east of Commercial Street, which were occupied by 17 people. Since the tenants worked at various hours of the day and night, the front doors of such buildings were never locked, providing open dark hallways, backyards and staircase landings – like the one at George Yard – for “immoral purposes”, aka side businesses. All of the poor but eager denizens of Whitechapel had side businesses.   As was usual, the working poor generally worked harder and were paid less than anybody else in the Victorian economy.

Many of the front, ground floor apartments were rented to small shops, pubs, or even light industry. The ground floor front room of 29 Hanbury, in the first block north of the Commercial Street,   was a shop run by the well named Mrs. Hardiman, who sold cat meat pies. And I do not mean meat pies for cats. 

Mrs. Hardiman also slept in the same 8 by 8 foot room, with her 16 year old son. At night they also shared the room with their landlord, Amelia Richardson, and Thomas, her 14 year old mentally challenged grandson.  Above this, in the first floor back room was an old man named Windsor, who slept there with his 27 year old mentally challenged son. The first floor front apartment was vacant and locked. The rear room on the second floor was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and their adopted daughter. The third floor rear room was used by Mrs. Sarah Cox.,   

On the front ground floor of number 17 Hanbury Street, on the north corner with John Street and in the same block, was the “Weaver's Arms” public house, popularly known as “Coonies”. The name on the liquor license was William Turner, but the owner of the building was John MaCarthy. And he was the  “Stage Door Johnny” to the “Queen the English Music Halls”, the lively, vulgar and hilarious 18 year old Marie Lloyd. 

Marie (above) had been preforming since she was 15, and her first hit song, “The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery”, displayed a genius at double entrendre two generations before Mae West - “They call him a cobbler, but he's not a cobbler, allow me to state. For Johnny is a tradesman and he works in the Boro'l, where they sole and heel them, while you wait.” The diminutive Marie, famous for her generosity and good heart, gave all four of John MaCarthy's daughters their start in show business.

There was another pub in the same block, at 23 Hanbury, “The Black Swan”, managed by Thomas David Roberts. In the back yard and basement behind, officially listed as 23a Hanbury Street, was where brothers Joseph and Thomas Bailey made packing cases. And one of their subcontractors was Mrs. Amelia Richardson, who operated her own shop in the basement and rear yard at 29 Hanbury Street.

Three floors above Mrs. Richardson's business, lived John Davis (above), with his wife and three sons, in their own 8 by 8 foot room. They had moved into the third floor front room two weeks earlier. Such a drifting existence was not unusual in Whitechapel. Of the 1.204 families tracked during 1888 by Mr. Booth's new Salvation Army,   44% changed their address that year. The nomadic Whitechapel existence produced constant worry and tension, being so financially unstable. On the morning of Saturday, 8 September, 1888, John Davis lay awake in his bed between 3:00am and 5:00am, unable to get back to sleep because of his economic worries.

Although he appeared to be “an old and somewhat feeble-looking man”, John Davis held a porter's job at the Leadenhall Market (above) in central London, “famous for its poultry, game, bacon, leather and hides”. And although shortly after 5 that morning he fell back asleep, he was re-awakened at 5:45 by the tolling of the Spitafield church clock.  John surrendered to the need to earn a salary and climbed out of bed. He quietly made himself a watery cup of tea, and dressed.  Just before 6:00 am he went downstairs, intending to use the latrine in the back yard.  Oddly, he found the back door was closed. But having opened that door, and before stepping across the sill and down the two steps to gain access to the outhouse, John Davis was brought to a halt.

Lying on her back, with her left side touching the fence shielding the yard from the neighbor's view, with her head at his feet, John Davis saw the body of a woman. John remembered,  “... her clothing (pushed) up to her knees, and her face covered with blood. What was lying beside her I cannot describe - it was part of her body.” It was, in fact, her intestines, pulled out from her bowel, and draped or tossed over her right shoulder.

Horrified, and in shock, John stumbled back through the house and out onto the street. He wanted to alert the Whitechapel Police Station house on Commercial Street. But a few steps out the front door of 29 Hanbury, he ran into three men, two preparing to work for the Robert's brother's at 23a Hanbury – James Kent and James Green - as well as passerby Henry Holland. Davis shouted to them in a panic, “Men, come here! Here’s a sight, a woman must have been murdered!”  

The three men followed Mr. Davis through 29 Hanbury to the back door. James Kent was under the impression that the victim was  "struggling…[and] had fought for her throat."  But after a quick look at the mutilated corpse,  all three men began running. James Kent headed for the Spitafield Market,, expecting to find a Constable there. Henry Holland headed for the Black Swan, determined to drown what he had seen in beer. Davis and Green headed for the Commercial Street Metropolitan Police station (above) two blocks away, where they demanded to see a senior officer because  “Another woman has been murdered!” 

But not just been murdered, this time. This woman had been murdered and then butchered. The killer was growing more comfortable with letting his horror out into the world. He was finding its release satisfying, fulfilling, comforting, even calming. And he was speeding up.

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