Saucy Jack

He nods and gets up from the bed.

"I've been trying to work up the courage to rent one of you girls for days," he tells her as he pulls up his trousers. His clothes really are very handsome. He is out of place in the slums.

"What do you do for a livin'?" she asks him, curious.

"I'm a medical Student. My first year. Just paid my indentures."

A thrill of fear goes through Nell. She recalls a line from a letter that was published in the paper, and was much discussed in the Bells. "They say I'm a doctor now ha ha" the Ripper wrote. The young man, who had seemed such an innocent bit of fun, now seems sinister. He has an odd look about his face, she notices by the light of the fire, there is something disconnected in his eyes. He smiles at her queerly, then puts his hand in his pocket. Unable to help herself, Nell lets out a scream.

*****

She sees the knife in his hand. She was right. She realises death is upon her and cries out: "Oh! Murder!" With a swift, powerful, stroke he slashes her throat from left to right and arterial blood spatters across the faded wallpaper.

*****

Startled by the scream, the young man throws the money down. Two shillings, a princely sum and one beyond even Nell's optimistic assessment of his means. Gushingly, she apologises for the scream. "I've been a bit edgy of late. I'm sorry sir. I don't what got into me."

The young man, anxious to be gone, accepts the offered apology and strides purposefully into the street, first taking care to ensure that he is unobserved. Nell gathers the money up and sits by the fire.

For some reason, she can't stop shaking.

*****

I have been guilty of misdirection; at the crucial moment we were all looking the wrong way. Carrotty Nell was not the fifth victim of Jack the Ripper. The murder, then, was not at Nell's place but at number Thirteen Miller Court, off Dorset Street where last we saw Ginger in the company of her short, stout beerswilling client. We should have been watching her.

*****

Mary Ann Cox, a thirty-one year old widow and prostitute, and one of Ginger's neighbours, was returning home at around midnight to warm herself and saw Kelly ahead of her, accompanied by s funny, fat little man who was scruffily attired and wearing a billycock hat. The man was carrying a pail of beer.

Mrs. Cox followed them into Miller's Court and bid the pair of them goodnight, with a wink and a smile. The man hurried off and Ginger returned the goodnight with a voice obfuscated and slurred by liquor and then thought it proper that she warn her neighbour that she intended to sing. Having thereby discharged herself of her neighbourly obligations, she commenced a spirited rendition of "A Violet from Mother's Grave". This song would be going around her head – and coming forth from between her lips at great volume – all night.

"Scenes of my childhood arise before my gaze,
Bringing recollections of bygone happy days.
When down in the meadow in childhood I would roam."

At half-past midnight, Catherine Picket, a flower seller who lived nearby, was awoken by the wretched song:

"No one's left to cheer me now within that good old home,
Father and Mother, they have pass'd away;
Sister and brother, now lay beneath the clay,
But while life does remain to cheer me, I'll retain
This small violet I pluck'd from mother's grave."

She angrily began to dress in order to go out and remonstrate with the "fucking Irish banshee" but her husband stayed her: "You leave the poor woman alone." he said.

At one in the morning it was beginning to rain harder. Again, Mary Ann Cox returned home to warm herself at her fireside and smiled at hearing that Ginger was still singing.

"Only a violet I pluck'd when but a boy,
And oft'time when I'm sad at heart this flow'r has giv'n me joy;
So while life does remain in memoriam I'll retain,
This small violet I pluck'd from mother's grave."

She had, she reflected, at least been warned. There was a light coming from Kelly's room.

Shortly after one, Mary Ann went out again, passing as she did so Elizabeth Prater.

Elizabeth was an abandoned wife and was standing at that time at the entrance to Miller's Court waiting for a man. She was always waiting for a man. She stood there for about a half hour and then went into John McCarthy's room to have a ca couple of drinks and a chat. McCarthy was the landlord of Miller's court.

Elizabeth didn't hear any singing and saw no one entering nor leaving the Court. After a few minutes she went back to her room, which was directly above Ginger's, and braced two chairs in front of her door to keep out intruders, before going to sleep without undressing on top of the sheets. She was pissed out of her skull.

Two in the morning and George Hutchinson was walking along Commercial Street and passed a man at the corner of Thrawl Street but paid him no heed. At Flower and Dean Street he met Ginger Kelly who had evidently left her quarters and was again walking the streets.

"Mr. Hutchinson, can you lend me sixpence?" she asked, all demure smiles and fluttering eyelashes.

"I can't," said Hutchinson ruefully, "I blew all me money going down to Romford."

"Good morning," Kelly replied churlishly and then drunkenly insisted: "I must go and find some money." She then walked away in the direction of Thrawl Street. Hutchinson followed her with his eyes, watching her shapely arse, which was stutteringly swaying from side-to-side, its rhythm hypnotic.

She met the man in the shadows, whom Hutchinson had passed earlier. Hutchinson observed the man put his hand on Kelly's shoulder and say something at which they both laughed, Ginger's cackle ringing out clearly through the night.

He heard Kelly say "All right" and the man reply something like "You will be all right for what I have told you." The man then put his arm around her and they began to walk towards Dorset Street.

Hutchinson also noticed that the man had a small parcel in his left hand.

Instinctively, he followed them.
While standing under a street light outside the Queen's Head Public House, Hutchinson got a good look at the man with Ginger Kelly. He had, according to his account later, a dark complexion and heavy dark moustache, turned up at the corners. He wore a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes, a long dark coat trimmed with astrakhan and a white collar with a black necktie fixed with a horseshoe pin. He wore dark spats over light button over boots and had an enormous gold chain in his waistcoat with a large seal with a red stone hanging from it. He carried kid gloves in his right hand and a small package in his left. He was 5' 6" or 5' 7" tall and about thirty-five or thirty-six years old.

Is this Jack the Ripper? It is an amazingly accurate description of someone glimpsed momentarily in the light of a gas-lamp in the rain. Is Hutchinson's assertion that the man looks Jewish to him, genuine or it anti-Semitism stoked up by speculation in the press? Is Hutchinson a fantasist? Why, we might ask, was Hutchinson following them? What did he want? What had he seen?

Kelly and the man crossed Commercial Street and turned down Dorset. Hutchinson continued to follow them. They stopped outside Miller's Court and talked for approximately three minutes.

The omnipresent Hutchinson heard Kelly say "All right, my dear. Come along. You will be comfortable." The man put his arm around Ginger who kissed him.

"I've lost my handkerchief," she said, frowning. At this he handed her a red handkerchief. She laughingly thanked him, and nuzzled up to him.

The couple then headed off down Miller's Court. Hutchinson waited until the clock stuck three then turned on his heels and left as he heard it strike the hour.

He must have passed Mrs. Cox returning home yet again, suffering terribly with the cold. It was raining hard and there was now no sound nor light coming from Kelly's room. Cox decided not to go back out but could not go to sleep.

Throughout the night she occasionally heard men going in and out of the court. She told the inquest into her neighbour's death: "I 'eard someone go out at a quarter to six. I don't know what 'ouse he went out of. I 'eard no door shut."

*****

It is now four in the morning, and Carrotty Nell is screaming at her hapless ingenue client.

Elizabeth Prater is startled awake by her pet kitten Diddles treading softly on her neck. She hears a faint cry of "Oh, murder!" but, as it is common to hear the cry of murder in this district, she pays no attention to it.

Sarah Lewis, who is staying with friends in Miller's Court, also hears the cry.

I want to save her – I want to exercise my authorial power to spare her his demonic fury. I want Elizabeth and Sarah to raise a hue and cry and for there to be a policeman close-by who will rush in and stay the murderer's knife-hand before he slashes her throat. I want the Ripper to be apprehended in the nick of time and forced to explain himself. I want, like all authors, to impose order on chaos; give meaning to randomness. I can't. This is history, horrible, immutable. This is real.

Oh, fuck.

*****

She sees the knife in his hand. She was right in her irrational premonition of his horrific intent. She realises that death is upon her and cries out: "Oh! Murder!" With a swift, powerful stroke he slashes her throat from left to right and arterial blood spatters across the faded wallpaper. Before her eyes in the rapidly darkening room Ginger holds the image of two beautiful, statuesque youths who almost, almost loved her.

*****

But what happened in the room? We have heard the evidence of the movements of Ginger Kelly leading up to her murder and the moment of her throat being slashed from left to right, but what did the Ripper do to her after that? What makes the murder of Ginger so much more notorious, so much more horrific than the other manifold murders in late nineteenth century Whitechapel?

I don't have the stomach to describe the frenetic hacking and carving up of the body of Mary Jane Kelly, or the manifold abominations visited upon her corpse. She was subjected to it once, and I have not the will to subject her to it again. I hope you will forgive me my queasiness. The Times editorial on Saturday, November 10, 1888 described the murder as

"if possible of a more hideous character than the atrocities already committed in Whitechapel ... No revolting circumstance is wanting to the crime, which has manifestly been committed by one who took a demoniac pleasure in his ghastly work. The victim['s body] ... has been mutilated even more hideously than those of the former victims. It would be impossible to describe literally the scene before those who discovered yesterday morning her remains in Dorset-street. No imagination could conceive the effects of the malign and depraved fury of the murderer."

It is an understatement. If you are still intent on satisfying your curiosity as to the animalistic ferocity of the Ripper, and his deliberately orchestrated, orgiastic abandon, then I refer you to the report of Doctor Thomas Bond, eminent police surgeon, who had the misfortune to attend the scene. It is readily available on the web. Dr Bond evokes the horror of the scene more eloquently than ever I could. If I were you, I would not read it. But, then, I have seen the photograph of the body in its sad little room in Miller's Court.

*****

"Well I remember my dear old mother's smile," sings Ginger at half past one in the morning, to the great annoyance of her neighbours:
"As she used to greet me when I returned from toil,
Always knitting in the old arm chair,
Father used to sit and read for all us children there,
But now all is silent around the good old home;
They all have left me in sorrow here to roam,
But while life does remain, in memoriam I'll retain
This small violet I pluck'd from mother's grave."

*****

Nell hears of the murder the following afternoon, after she has dragged herself out of bed and into the Ten Bells. She hears of the horrors to which her companion was subjected.

Breathless, giddy, she rushes out of the pub and towards Scotland Yard, desperately trying to remember the face and appearance of the man with whom she saw Ginger. She breaks into a run, as if by getting to the police quickly she can prevent the atrocity and revive her friend.

Try as she might, however, she cannot recall him. He is faceless, shimmering, indistinct in her mind's eye. She stops short. She did not see the Ripper. It's no good her going to the police. She did not see him.

Fretfully and in a state of shock, she begins to walk towards Dorset Street, and, before she knows it, she has arrived at Miller's Court where a crowd has gathered, craning to see the latest handiwork of the Ripper. His latest work of art.

Feeling useless, Nell leaves and wonders aimlessly around the streets, coming at last back to the Ten Bells, where she sits and numbs herself with gin and warm water.

That night, she will go back to work.

*****

Carrotty Nell, aka Frances Coles, survived for a couple more years. She was murdered on 13th February 1891. Was it by Jack?

She has not the distinction of being numbered among the 'canonical' Ripper murders. She is just someone who died a violent death in that place where it was commonplace to hear the cry of 'murder'.

Because Coles is not canonical, she does not have the honour of being listed on the cheery blackboard of Jack the Ripper's victims which adorns the wall of the modern Ten Bells pub on the corner of Commercial Street and Fournier Street, which is a couple of hundred yards from the site of Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, where now there stands a food warehouse, the scene of the Bacchic violation of Mary Kelly, "...more like the work of a devil than the work of a man..."

An industry has grown up around the Whitechapel murders. The Ripperologists pour over the evidence, scrutinise the horrific photographs, ponder the layout of Mary Jane Kelly's room in Miller Court. There must be a solution. There must be a reason behind the brutality. If only they could find it.

They are trying, these would-be heroes, these Sherlocks, to save the women, one hundred and eighteen years after the fact, who fell victim to Jack's knife. To rewrite the history in which Saucy Jack went undiscovered and unpunished. To give his demoniac evil a human face. I wish them all the luck in the world.

I urge you to buy a drink at the Ten Bells – the landlord will happily sell you a 'Ripper Tipple' – and look around you. Look at the people: the weary shoppers; Jack aficionados; chattering tourists. Was he here? While Ginger Kelly was buying her last drinks, warbling her last Irish songs, was he here when the landlord called "Time"?

Look closely at the people around you, at their faces. Is he here now?

*****

GLOSSARY

Bernard-Shaw, George – British author and communist.

Bobcull – rich man

Carrotty Nell – nickname of the prostitute Frances Coles (1865-1891)

Cove – man

Cimmerian – Homeric term, describing a land which is perpetually dark

Dairies – breasts

Erebus – Latin term for the underworld

Ginger Kelly – nickname of the prostitute Mary Jane Kelly (c.1863-1888)

Gladstone – William Ewart. British Prime Minister on four separate occasions.
Renowned for his moral probity, he sought to rescue fallen women and
would nightly beat himself with a cane to purify himself.

Half-a-Crown – a denomination worth two shillings and sixpence. Someone living in London in 1888 would expect to pay 1½d on a pint of milk and around 5sh and 6d on rent per week. A woman working as a prostitute could expect to get around two or three pence per customer. A pint of beer would set you back 3½d.

John – prostitute's client

Milkers – breasts

Miss Laycock – A prostitute. There were probably about twelve hundred prostitutes in the Whitechapel district.

Mollie – slang for an effeminate man.

Mossie Face – cunt

Mother-of-saints – cunt

Noserag – handkerchief

Pinchcock – prostitute

Play the Flute – perform sexually

Shilling – twelve pence

Wappe for a winne – Prostitute oneself