The Ripper's Victims in Print Read online

  Those who made their homes in the East End generally struggled to find lodging for the night, once their daily business had been concluded and they no longer wished to—or could afford to—stay in a pub. Even with the large number of doss houses, there were not enough beds for every homeless member of the East End to have one, a fact that was highlighted during the Ripper murders. Single beds cost four pence a night and were generally available in doss houses that accepted a single gender, while double beds were eight pence in houses that allowed men and women to sleep together. Prostitutes would thus charge clients four pence per encounter or allow a man to spend the night with them if he paid for the double bed—a more certain arrangement, since any money earned during the day could easily be spent on food or, more likely, drink. If a single bed was too expensive or a lodger only had two pence to spend, she could pay to sleep on a “line.” This was merely a rope or webbing of ropes arranged to keep the sleeper off of the floor and was hardly conducive to a good night’s sleep, although it at least provided the lodger with a place to pass the night.

  Doss houses were owned by people of means who may never have set food inside and thus may have not known the truth of their conditions. Linens were supposedly washed once a week, which was more than could be said for the various bodies that slept on them, although the job itself might be done by potential dossers in exchange for a bed for the night. There were kitchens that served as little more than common rooms with fires since they did not serve food. Lodgers who had their own food could warm it and themselves by the fires—keeping an eye on the food so it would not be stolen—and socialize with others in the given space. Even those without food or money for a bed might attempt to get comfortable in the space before inevitably being kicked out into the street. Lodging houses did not deal in credit.

  As bad as the doss houses sound, the workhouses were worse. Although the poor hated them, there were always long lines that formed early, since space was limited. Each petitioner would be searched and rejected if a single penny was found—absolute poverty was necessary to enter the workhouse. Tobacco, knives, and matches were not allowed in the workhouses, either, and it was unlikely that petitioners would have risked having their meager possessions taken from them at the gate. Anyone who passed this initial inspection and allowed inside would be washed in a common tub, dried with workhouse towels, and sent off to sleep in a communal ward. The cots did not have mattresses but were instead strung with rope, like hammocks. Breakfast was served at six and consisted of oatmeal or moldy meat before inmates were sent to pound stones, pick oakum, or work in the infirmary or mortuary. Dinner at eight consisted of leftovers from the infirmary. If the lodgers were willing and able to put in this long day of work, they were given a second night. Those who refused to work were kicked out and denied even the scanty meals and protection of the common ward at night. This work, it may be added, was tantamount to that performed by prisoners. Any East Ender who willingly sought out the work house was clearly desperate.

  Aside from toiling for a day in a workhouse, women might earn their doss money through prostitution. The number of prostitutes living and working in Whitechapel is debatable between various contemporary reports that either underestimated or perhaps inflated the population, but it was clearly in the thousands. It was not as straightforward a proposition as simply finding a man and exchanging the deed for money, and not as safe as a single random encounter with a stranger. Gangs would roam the streets and wait for prostitutes to finish their transactions so that they might rob them. If these gangs happened upon a prostitute without money, or if a client decided to seek revenge on a woman for inflicting him with disease, she might face anything from a beating to the loss of her life. These women lacked even the dubious protection a pimp may have provided and instead led wandering, dangerous lives in which their absences—and indeed their deaths—may not have been noticed immediately. It was the violence accompanying the Ripper murders that led them to gain so much attention.

  The police force was relatively new in the 1880s and policemen were largely untrusted by the common citizen. Officers were required to wear their uniforms off duty as well as on, to prevent any underhanded spying, and in the case of the Ripper murders the suggestion of plain-clothed policemen was met with strong resistance. Some officers were assigned to stand at fixed points during their shifts, while others walked very specific beats at a carefully measured pace. This meant that their routes could be timed and anticipated and in the East End, with its labyrinth of streets, it was very easy to get out of sight of someone even if they could still be heard. In an attempt to throw off the casual criminal, policemen intermittently spent their shifts walking their beat in the reverse order, although presumably they passed the same locations at the same intervals as before.

  Along with the newness of the police force, Londoners in 1888 were also faced with the newness of readily available mass media. The Central News Agency, which was to play a role of its own in the Ripper murders, had been founded in 1870 and news could now be relayed via telegraph and spread faster than before. Especially of interest in the case of the Ripper, death inquests were open to the public, and reporters made sure to attend. In this era of “new journalism,” death and crime certainly sold papers. Granted, it was illegal for those papers to publish certain key details of those death inquests, but nothing would get in the way of the good story. Even the truth was often sacrificed in order to neaten up a narrative around the edges, providing background information, scandal, or other juicy details to the reading public.

  In spite of the usual danger of the East End, which was after all so crime-ridden that cries of “Murder!” were ignored by the populace and the deaths themselves ignored by greater London, the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper made headlines the world over. Mutilation of corpses was a previously unknown phenomenon that baffled the Victorian mind, and the crimes themselves were without any apparent motive. The discovery—and condition—of the bodies of Mary Ann, Annie, Liz, Kate, and Marie Jeanette, as well as all information available from their death inquests and any other witnesses reporters could track down, were all considered newsworthy and fit for the average citizen to read, discuss, and share with anyone who had not yet heard it.

  Mary Ann Nichols

  Mary Ann Nichols, commonly labeled Jack the Ripper’s first victim, was discovered dead early on the morning of August 31, 1888, in Buck’s Row. The men who first came upon her initially suspected she was passed out drunk, which would have been common for women of the area who happened to be out alone in the wee hours of the morning. Newspapers of the day recorded not only personal interviews but details of the inquest, so there were multiple voices present to describe who Mary Ann was. This initial impression of Mary Ann is multifaceted, although likely tempered by the violence of her death and the publicity of the statements. Cultural resistance to speaking ill of the dead might indeed be a factor.

  Mary Ann had been separated from her husband for nine years at the time of her death, and it is revealed that this separation came because she was so often drunk. William Nichols is therefore presented as having left his wife—and, perhaps, abandoned her to her brutal fate—because of her own personal failings. It comes as a further black mark that the couple had five children and that the youngest was only about two years old when she left. Mary Ann therefore failed not only as a proper sober woman, but also as a wife and mother, and had no choice but to seek her own way in the world because she could not fit the roles presented to her.

  Initially William Nichols allowed his wife a weekly allowance that would be enough to see to her room and board, but all manner of supported ended in 1882, “it having come to his knowledge that she was living the life of a prostitute.”1 From then until her death, Nichols neither saw nor heard from his wife, and presumably did not take it upon himself to seek her out. Now truly forced to fend for herself, Mary Ann turned to the workhouses, which gave the outward appearance of taking in the destitute for honest work in ex
change for room and board. This “honest work” consisted of backbreaking labor, while the room and board were minimally clean and nutritious. Mary Ann was identified because of her petticoats, which were labeled as property of the Lambeth Workhouse, one of the workhouses in which she had stayed.

  At some point in her history Mary Ann had attempted both honest labor, working as a maid, and living with her father. Her employment did not last long because she stole some clothes and ran away, and it was explained that she left her father because they had fought the previous evening. It is strongly hinted that, in both cases, it was Mary Ann’s love of drinking that ended the possibility of a better life. The theme of drink destroying good women—or at least women who had once possessed the potential to fit their expected roles—is common throughout these narratives.

  Despite this negative tendency, reports held that Mary Ann was not necessarily a bad or unpleasant person. Because of the manner of her death, police looked for any reason anyone would have wanted to harm her, and they came up short. Both her current companions at her series of lodging houses and her father agreed on this point. Even allowing for the improvement of character after a death and evidence given in such a public forum, a solid answer of a threat could have led to the identification of the Ripper himself. Since the Ripper was never identified, despite multiple murders and presumably the best efforts of the London police force, the suggestion that she was relatively inoffensive outside of her drinking might well hold true. If anyone had witnessed Mary Ann aggravating another, reporting it would have garnered a witness instant fame. Along the same lines, anyone who held an opposing opinion might also have likewise held his tongue rather than take on the position of being a suspect.

  Aside from having been labeled as living the life of a prostitute, it was also reported that Mary Ann “evidently formed irregular connexions”2 even during the time she was living with her father. It was suggested at the inquiry that she had wanted to remove herself from paternal oversight when she left her father so that such encounters could continue without judgment. Yes, the newspapers admitted, perhaps it was because they had fought, but it still could have been a fight over Mary Ann’s behavior, a proposal that is clearly the more scandalous. The newspapers and inquiry reports thus make it clear how they suspected Mary Ann had been making a living, even when a fellow lodger chose to disagree. This same lodger, although she would not admit that Mary Ann had been a prostitute, did acknowledge that she had been known to drink to excess, which was not a trait associated with proper women. The fact that she claimed ignorance of Mary Ann’s means of making a living and then immediately admitted to her drinking habits might be seen, then, to be a hint or admission in its own right.

  Despite these points against Mary Ann, the inquisition did reveal one tidbit that might be in Mary Ann’s favor: there was the claim that she had left William, and not the other way around, because he had gone to live with the woman who had nursed her after the birth of her youngest child. Despite initial newspaper reports that William Nichols had left his wife because of her drinking or the factual statement that Mary Ann had left her children when they were still so young, this counter proposal presents Mary Ann as the sympathetic party. If William had indeed cheated on his wife when she was in her final confinement, this colors the reports of her drinking. Instead of being a weak-willed woman unable to refrain from alcohol, Mary Ann might be mourning the choice of an unfaithful husband. This suggestion is, however, mentioned only once and not overly emphasized. The overall impression of Mary Ann is that she was a nice enough woman, but prone to drink, and ended up living the life of a prostitute because she could not—or would not—do otherwise.

  Annie Chapman

  Annie Chapman, the second of the Ripper’s canonical victims, was found dead on the morning of September 8, 1888, in the backyard of a house on Hanbury Street. Because of the timing of Annie’s death and the length of the inquest into Mary Ann’s death, the murders were already connected during Mary Ann’s death inquest. Even though there was no evidence that Annie and Mary Ann may have crossed paths in life, they were connected in death almost immediately.

  Like Mary Ann, Annie was also separated from her husband, who had been giving her a larger weekly sum until the time of own death about eighteen months before her murder. Unlike Mary Ann, Annie was solidly connected to another man, a laborer named Edward Stanley. According to some reports, “with that exception she was not known to be acquainted with any particular man.”3 Although Annie was indeed known to associate with a man who was not her husband, it may have been only with this single man, and then there is also the possibility that this only occurred after she was widowed. At a time when women were incredibly dependent on men for their wellbeing, it might have been understandable, even to the general population of London, if Annie had indeed been associated with a man, especially since the death of her husband meant she had lost the security of her weekly allowance.

  Annie was also reported to have worn two brass rings, the single instance of these women to have worn jewelry. Being brass, they were not expensive and thus unlikely to be hawked. However, sentiment might be tied to the wearing of a wedding ring, as one of them was labeled, especially with her husband having been deceased. No evidence is given about the state of their marriage or why they parted. If, on the other hand, Annie wore the rings as testament to her laborer instead, it is still a sign of devotion to one man and therefore more respectable than Mary Ann’s label of prostitution.

  This image of Annie as a one-man woman, however rosy, does not last through the inquiry documents. The night watchmen of the lodging house where she routinely stayed backed up the impression that she was routinely seen with just the one man, but another witness mentioned how Annie routinely spent Saturday nights with a pensioner—not a laborer—and that she also “brought other men to the lodging-house.”4 Even if Edward Stanley was identifiable as both a laborer and a pensioner, that mention of the “other men” cements the idea of Annie’s means of earning a living. Lest anyone assume that these men went no further than the lodging house kitchen, the one Annie frequented allowed men and women to share beds.

  Annie seems to be more complicated not only because of reports she was indeed loyal to a single man, but because she is presented as having made a living by selling trinkets like flowers and crocheted items. Add to this the fact that her friend Amelia Farmer chose to describe her as having both industry and cleverness, neither of which would seem to be necessary for prostitution. Annie, it seems, had the mind, the skills, and the materials to turn to other paths to make a living. Adding to this positive picture of Annie were reports that she was friendly to others in the lodging house, and the only enemy that surfaced turned out to be a woman and therefore not likely to have been the murderer.

  Her drinking seems to have been limited to Saturdays, perhaps solely with the aforementioned pensioner, with the assumption that Annie would have made her money Saturdays by selling the things she had crafted during the week. This sunny, almost respectable picture of a woman down her luck is further tempered when Amelia Farmer adds that she knew her friend was often out late at night and, despite the talent and supplies, was apparently not entirely discriminatory about how she made her coins. Women who sell flowers or crochet things generally do not need to be out late at night. It is possible that all of Annie’s attempts to avoid prostitution failed her, simply because she ended up in the East End and without a regular income. Although she may have made every attempt to avoid prostitution, Annie still ended up in a yard with the Ripper.

  Elizabeth Stride

  Elizabeth Stride was the first of two women to have been discovered murdered in the early morning hours of September 30, 1888, and is the only Ripper victim who was thought to have been Swedish. Her body was discovered in Dutfield’s Yard. Both the deputy of the lodging house she frequented and a longtime friend agreed that she had been born in Sweden and had at one time been married, but had lost her husband and at least some of
her children during the sinking of the pleasure ship the Princess Alice in 1878. Liz herself was meant to have been only one of a handful of passengers who had survived the sinking. There was no explanation of why or when she had come to England and little information about her past, outside of the Princess Alice story, until the last three years of her life.

  Michal Kidney was able to provide this information since he had been living with Liz “nearly all that time.”5 That “nearly” meant Liz would leave Kidney apparently whenever she felt like, but he volunteered that this departure was due to her drinking habits and not because of any apathy she may have felt toward him. Kidney took pride in being the man Liz preferred. Like Mary Ann and Annie before her, Liz was afflicted with the compulsion to drink. Unlike the others, however, Liz had a steady man in her life who reported that he took her back every time she returned. Kidney further protested that Liz had not left him on the night of her death because she had taken off with anyone else, rejecting any suggestion that she might have made her living as a prostitute. Although it is not clear at this time what Liz did for a living, Kidney’s presence in both her life and at the inquest suggest that she might have been cared for well enough without having had to resort to prostitution.

  Again, though, these statements are augmented by other witnesses at the inquest. The deputy at the lodging house where she usually stayed reported the positive fact that she knew Liz to be clean and sober, but also the more troubling information that she used to stay out late at night. Proper women in Victorian England had no reason to stay out late at night. Further, even Kidney did not hide the fact that Liz drank, even if only occasionally. Whenever she drank, though, she left him for days at a time, once again linking her life and tendencies to those of Mary Ann and Annie. Outside of this little information, however, Liz remains mysterious.