Read Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 Online
Authors: Russell Edwards
Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 (10 page)
The
Star
was the only newspaper to cover Schwartz’s story in any depth, on 1 October. There are discrepancies between the police account and the one the newspaper published,
perhaps because of some over-enthusiastic journalism (all newspapers wanted to sensationalize the murders as much as possible) but also possibly because of Schwartz’s
poor English, which necessitated the use of a translator. Because I believe Schwartz is so important to this case, I think it’s important to reproduce the full article:
Information which may be important was given to the Leman Street police yesterday by an Hungarian concerning this murder. The foreigner was well-dressed and had the
appearance of being in the theatrical line. He could not speak a word of English, but came to the police station accompanied by a friend, who acted as interpreter. He gave his name and address
but the police have not disclosed them. A
Star
man, however, got wind of his call and ran him to earth in Backchurch Lane. The reporter’s Hungarian was quite as imperfect as the
foreigner’s English, but an interpreter was at hand and the man’s story was retold just as he had given it to the police. It is, in fact, to the effect that he saw the whole
thing.
It seems that he had gone out for the day and his wife had expected to move, during his absence, from their lodgings in Berner Street to others in Backchurch Lane. When he first came
homewards about a quarter to one he first walked down Berner Street to see if his wife had moved. As he turned the corner into Commercial Road he noticed some distance in front of him a man
walking as if partially intoxicated. He walked on behind him, and presently he noticed a woman standing in the entrance to the alleyway where the body was found. The half-tipsy man halted and
spoke to her. The Hungarian saw him put his hand on her shoulder and push her back into the passage, but feeling rather timid of getting involved in quarrels he crossed
to the other side of the street. Before he had gone many yards, however, he heard the sound of a quarrel and turned back to learn what was the matter, but just as he stepped from the kerb a
second man came out of the doorway of a public house a few doors off, and shouting some sort of warning to the man who was with the woman, rushed forward as if to attack the intruder. The
Hungarian states positively that he saw a knife in the second man’s hand, but he waited to see no more. He fled incontinently to his new lodgings.
He described the man with the woman as about 30 years of age, rather stoutly built, and wearing a brown moustache. He was dressed respectably in dark clothes and felt hat. The man who came
at him with the knife he also describes, but not in detail. He says he was taller than the other but not so stout, and that his moustaches were red. Both men seemed to belong to the same grade
of society. The police have arrested one man answering the description the Hungarian furnishes. The prisoner has not been charged, but is held for inquiries to be made. The truth of the
man’s statement is not wholly accepted.
The substantive differences between the two versions of Schwartz’s testimony are the intoxication of the first man; the fact he tries to push Elizabeth Stride into the
passage, not pull her into the road; that in the
Star
version it is the second man who calls out the warning; and the second man has a knife not a pipe. As the police presumably took more
care to write down
their statement than the reporter did, it is their version that is most widely accepted. Whatever the differences, the main story remains the same, and
Schwartz was considered then, and now, a very important witness. Sadly, the second man did not come forward as a witness to corroborate, or contradict, Schwartz’s version of events.
Elizabeth Stride’s body was discovered at 1 a.m., when Louis Diemschutz returned with his horse and cart to the International Working Men’s Educational Club, where he lived. He had
been working that day at Westow Hill market, in Crystal Palace, where he sold costume jewellery from his barrow. He was also the steward of the club which he ran with his wife. As he turned into
the gateway of Dutfield’s Yard, his horse shied to the left, causing Diemschutz to glance down at the ground next to the club wall to see what was spooking the horse. Realizing that there was
something there, he got off his cart, prodded the shape with his whip and struck a match to give him light to see by. The wind instantly snuffed out the match, so he ran upstairs into the club to
fetch a candle, as he had glimpsed what he thought was a drunken woman lying on the ground.
Diemschutz told his wife and a few club members that there was a woman lying in the yard and that he was ‘unable to say whether she was drunk or dead’. He grabbed a candle and went
back downstairs, with one of the club members. As they approached the body they could see blood, a large pool on the cobbles next to the body, which had a deep wound in the neck. Diemschutz let out
a cry which brought more members from the club upstairs, including his wife who screamed when she saw the blood and the woman’s ‘ghastly face’.
The men ran out shouting ‘Police!’ as they went. Morris Eagle managed to find two police constables, Henry Lamb and Edward Collins, in Commercial Road. When
they got back to Dutfield’s Yard they saw a crowd of people already gathering at the gateway into the yard. PC Lamb managed to keep them back, telling them that if they got blood on their
clothes then they would only attract trouble for themselves.
He shone his lantern on the body, and touched the woman’s face; it was still slightly warm. He could see that the blood by the body was still in a liquid state but when he felt for a pulse
he found nothing. PC Collins went for Dr Frederick Blackwell, who lived in Commercial Road, but as Dr Blackwell was not dressed, his assistant Edward Johnston went on ahead of him. He stated that
the body was warm when he arrived – except for the hands which were quite cold – and that the blood had stopped flowing from the neck wound.
Dr Blackwell arrived at 1.16 a.m., according to his pocket watch. He reported that:
The deceased was lying on her left side obliquely across the passage, her face looking towards the right wall. Her legs were drawn up, her feet close against the wall of
the right side of the passage. Her head was resting beyond the carriage-wheel rut, the neck lying over the rut. Her feet were three yards from the gateway. Her dress was unfastened at the neck.
The neck and chest were quite warm, as were also the legs, and the face was slightly warm. The hands were cold. The right hand was open and on the chest, and was smeared with blood. The left
hand, lying on the ground, was partially closed, and contained a small packet of cachous wrapped
in tissue paper. There were no rings, nor marks of rings, on her hands.
The appearance of the face was quite placid. The mouth was slightly open. The deceased had round her neck a check silk scarf, the bow of which was turned to the left and pulled very tight. In
the neck there was a long incision which exactly corresponded with the lower border of the scarf. The border was slightly frayed, as if by a sharp knife. The incision in the neck commenced on
the left side, 2 ½ inches below the angle of the jaw, and almost in a direct line with it, nearly severing the vessels on that side, cutting the windpipe completely in two, and
terminating on the opposite side 1 ½ inches below the angle of the right jaw, but without severing the vessels on that side. I could not ascertain whether the bloody hand had been moved.
The blood was running down the gutter into the drain in the opposite direction of the feet. There was about 1lb. of clotted blood close by the body, and a stream all the way from there to the
back door of the club.
Dr George Bagster Phillips was also sent for and arrived on the scene at approximately 2 a.m. He agreed with Dr Blackwell’s account. At 4.30 a.m., amid growing excitement
in the area, the body of Elizabeth Stride was taken to the small St George-in-the-East mortuary. At the time of her death she was described as being about forty-two years old, 5 foot 2 inches in
height, with dark-brown curly hair and a pale complexion, with light grey eyes. She was wearing a long black jacket trimmed with black fur which she had on when she left her lodgings, an old skirt,
a dark-brown velvet bodice, two light serge petticoats, a white chemise, a pair of white stockings, a pair of side-spring boots and a black crêpe bonnet.
At the inquest the cause of Elizabeth Stride’s death was given as ‘loss of blood from the left carotid artery and the division of the windpipe’. In other
words, she died when the Ripper slashed her throat. Some experts believe that she actually had a heart attack before the throat slashing, because she was, according to Dr Blackwell ‘pulled
backwards’ by her silk scarf, and the pressure on her throat could have caused a reflex cardiac arrest. Whichever version is correct, she died quickly.
Israel Schwartz’s account of the attack on the woman he later identified as being Elizabeth Stride, and his description of the man attacking her only fifteen minutes before she was found
dead, was an important lead. Coupled with Dr Blackwell’s opinion that death occurred between 12.46 a.m. and 12.56 a.m., it is highly probable that Schwartz saw the man who killed her. It was
also widely felt that, because Stride’s body exhibited none of the abdominal mutilations evident in the previous cases, the murderer may well have been disturbed by the arrival of Louis
Diemschutz on his pony and cart and either he left before Diemschutz got close enough to see the entrance or, more likely I believe, he had hidden in the shadows of the yard, escaping during those
brief moments when Diemschutz first went into the club. If Diemschutz had locked the gate, the Ripper’s reign could have been over.
Another element of Israel Schwartz’s statement that is interesting is that he said the would-be attacker called out, ‘Lipski!’ Israel Schwartz was described in the press as
‘Semitic’ in appearance, leading to the possibility that the man’s outburst was aimed at him. Interestingly, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, in whose hand Schwartz’s
statement is written, made a note on the statement to the effect that he believed that the
use of this word suggested that Stride’s
attacker
was Jewish,
although it’s hard to see why he would shout out an insult to himself, unless he is referring to himself as a Jewish man, and perhaps appealing to someone he assumed is also Jewish to ignore
the attack. It does not seem rational, but ‘rational’ is hardly a word to apply to a crazed and sadistic killer.
What is unusual about Israel Schwartz as a witness is that he did not appear to have been called to the inquest to give his evidence, possibly because he spoke poor English. Matthew Packer, the
fruiterer who claimed to have sold grapes to Stride and a man shortly before the murder, was not called because his evidence was unreliable. Schwartz, however, had an important story to tell and
regardless of how it was covered, his claims would have considerable influence on the hunt for the Ripper in years to come, and could have ironed out the differences between the official statement
and the newspaper account. It could be that the police did not call him because he was the only witness who appeared to have witnessed an actual attack on a victim. They may have taken his
statement privately, to avoid the description of the man he saw being published in all the press reports of the inquest. (The detectives were constantly battling the red herrings the press threw
into their investigations.) It is also possible that he refused to testify because he was Jewish, a theory I will come back to later.
Because there are more witnesses, or potential witnesses, to this killing than to any of the other Ripper murders, the fate of Elizabeth Stride has been the most debated part of the whole case
over the years: it is one of the few attacks that yields possibly vital clues. Until I found my proof, which is in a different league from the speculation that has been all we have had until now,
it was widely believed to be the murder that
would most likely be the key to solving the mystery. I believe that, in Israel Schwartz, we come the nearest to a true account of
events just before the unfortunate Elizabeth met her death, and we have no comparable evidence from any of the other killings. Israel Schwartz is an important plank in my case, but, thankfully,
only a plank: the substance of the structure is incontrovertible science.
But that night, 30 September 1888, would see a second murder, so far the most violent in the series. It seems that the arrival of Louis Diemschutz stopped the Whitechapel murderer in the act and
left him frustrated and unfulfilled, having not had the chance to carry out his ritualistic mutilations, driving him to kill again with renewed ferocity within three quarters of an hour.
CHAPTER FIVE
FROM HELL
The Death of Catherine Eddowes
A
t about the same time that Elizabeth Stride’s body was discovered in Berner Street, forty-six-year-old Catherine Eddowes was being released
from Bishopsgate Police Station in the City of London. At 8.30 p.m. that night she had been found slumped in front of 29 Aldgate High Street in a very drunken, but still conscious, state. A small
crowd had assembled around her which attracted the attention of City PC Louis Robinson. In vain, he tried to prop Catherine up against the front of No. 29, but she immediately slumped back down
again. When he asked her name, she replied ‘nothing’. PC Robinson was soon joined by PC George Simmons and together they lifted Catherine and escorted her, perhaps with some difficulty,
to Bishopsgate Police Station.
At the station, Sergeant James Byfield, who was on desk duty that night, booked Catherine in and she was taken to a cell to sleep off her drunken stupor. Throughout the evening PC George Hutt
made regular checks on the cell and at 12.55 a.m., after hearing Catherine singing quietly to herself, he checked one last time. He felt that she was now sober
enough to be
released. Before leaving, she was asked her name and said that she was ‘Mary Ann Kelly’ and that she lived at 6 Fashion Street. It is strange that she chose as her alias a name so
similar to two of the other victims, Mary Jane Kelly and Mary Ann Nichols. She also asked the time, at which PC Hutt told her that it was too late to get any more drink. Catherine muttered that she
would get ‘a damn fine hiding’ when she got home and PC Hutt responded with something resembling a reprimand: ‘And serve you right, you have no right to get drunk.’