Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 (16 page)

I cannot recall the
exact
conversation, but paraphrased, it went something like this:

I told him about the relevance of the celebration dates of Michaelmas to the murders of Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly and he said: We never knew that,
that’s new.’

I felt really pleased: it was the first confirmation I’d had that I was onto something from someone who knew about the case. Now I
knew
I had to buy the shawl.

But before I had long to savour my success, Alan threw something else of vital importance into the ring. He said he
could not understand why people still continued to
talk about who the Ripper was, because – he claimed – Scotland Yard had always known who he was, and that they had documentation to prove it. I asked if he minded telling me the
name:

So now, in an astonishing couple of days, I had found out the significance of the shawl and, incredibly, the true identity
of Jack the Ripper – at
least according to Alan McCormack’s understanding of the police evidence.

And that is how I came to be at the auction in Bury St Edmunds in March 2007 and a couple of days later agreed to buy the shawl.

When I got it home I spread it across a large footstool covered in pale cream velvet in our drawing room to look at it properly. It was surprisingly large and existed in two
sections, the bigger one being 73.5 inches in length and 25.5 inches wide. The smaller piece had been cut more and was 24 inches long and 19 inches wide. The predominant colour was dark brown, with
a more golden brown on the reverse. At both ends were blue sections measuring about 2 foot long, patterned with a design of Michaelmas daisies and golden lilies in hues of red, ochre and gold. This
pattern also ran along the edges of the main brown central section in the form of a border. Pieces had been cut from the shawl at some time, leaving jagged edges at one end of each piece. The other
edges of both sections had a fringe of small tassels.

There were a number of stains on both sections; on the larger, a multitude of small dots could be seen near the fringe and a larger dark stain slightly further in. In the middle brown section,
similar dark stains were present as well as some smaller white dots where the colour had leached out. The smaller piece had some minor dark stains and again, near the fringe, more little markings.
I was fascinated by the stains. I could clearly see what looked as if it was blood, but I was surprised there wasn’t more blood, and I dismissed the white marks as probably nothing more
significant than the ageing process. Another pale stain I thought had been caused by bleach. Little did I know.

I stored the shawl in an antique glass-fronted cabinet I bought specifically for the purpose at an antiques shop in The Lanes in Brighton, then carefully concealed the
shawl beneath a display of silver which Sally and I also chose: I thought that if we were burgled, the burglars would get away with the silver and would not bother with a couple of old pieces of
cardboard and some tatty fabric that were lining the bottom of the cabinet. Storing the shawl there also kept it out of sunlight and contamination.

I read and re-read the letter of provenance from the previous owner:

The letter included his address and phone number.

I had already met Andy Parlour at the auction, and I knew from that encounter that he and Sue knew more about the history of the shawl than anyone else. They only had one copy of their book at
the auction, and, besides, I had not wanted to show my hand by being too eager for it at the time. But now I had their telephone number, and within a couple of days I gave them a ring, told them I
had the shawl, and arranged for them to come to my house.

Andy and Sue have been helpful and kind friends throughout this journey of mine. They have not betrayed to others who owns the shawl, and they have acted as a buffer between me and various
people wanting access to it: lots of people assume it is in their possession. I am, and have always been, very grateful to them.

It was from them, and their book, that I discovered the full history of the shawl.

In December 1993, the curator of the Crime Museum at the time, Bill Waddell, published
The Black Museum: New Scotland Yard
, in which he wrote:

Waddell was not the first person to mention the existence of the shawl in print. That honour went to Paul Harrison in his 1991 book
Jack the Ripper: The Mystery Solved
in which he set out
his case for Mary Kelly’s former lover, Joseph Barnett, being the Ripper. During his research for the book, Harrison, who at that time was a
serving sergeant in the Nottinghamshire Constabulary, received a telephone call out of the blue from London-based Chief Inspector Mick Wyatt, who had heard of Harrison’s Ripper research and
felt that he would like to know about a possible genuine artefact from the murders. Harrison was fully expecting the item to be a knife and was surprised when Wyatt said that it was a shawl
belonging to one of the Ripper’s victims, though he could not be sure which one. He gave Harrison the address, in Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, where the shawl was kept.

In late November 1989, about a year after he spoke to Wyatt, Harrison followed up this lead, and found that the address given to him was a video shop owned by John and Janice Dowler. Eventually,
Harrison met the Dowlers at their shop in St Osyth Road and found them very helpful, but also very cynical about the genuineness of the shawl, which by then they had returned to its original owner.
The story the Dowlers had been told was that the shawl had been taken from the body of Catherine Eddowes. Either the shawl had been acquired at the scene, or
en route
to the mortuary. A
friend in the antiques business offered it to the Dowlers a few years earlier, knowing they were from London and thinking that they might be interested in a piece of London history.

The alleged background to the shawl made them feel a little uncomfortable, but they accepted the gift. They were told that the missing section had been removed because of bloodstains, but there
were still stains visible on the remaining fabric, which disturbed them enough to ask their friend to take it back. They were presented instead with two cuttings from
the
shawl which had been placed in a mount and framed, and which they displayed in their shop. On the back of the frame was the inscription:

The friend in question was David Melville-Hayes who actually worked for Arabella Vincent Fine Art and who specialized in hand-colouring prints. It is a family tradition: both
David’s father and grandfather were colourists, and he believes the line of colourists goes back to 1764. David himself has done work for the Queen Mother. He is the great-great-nephew of the
police officer Amos Simpson who had acquired the shawl, and the history of the shawl had been passed down over generations. What follows is what David had learnt from his family, and what he, in
turn, passed on to me. It is important to put this specific version of events across, as the story of the origins of the shawl has been muddied with the passing of time:

Simpson, being on ‘special duties’ at the time of the double murder, had gone to Mitre Square with several other officers from both the City and Metropolitan forces, and with another
policeman accompanied the body of Catherine Eddowes as it was wheeled to the City mortuary in Golden Lane. Seeing the shawl, he asked one of the senior officers if it was
fine to take it, as he thought his wife Jane might find the silk useful for dressmaking. David believes that it was his rank, Acting Sergeant, that allowed him to have the shawl. When Simpson
showed the bloodstained shawl to Jane, she understandably wanted nothing to do with it. Regardless of Jane’s opinions, it was not disposed of: and that’s one of the first and most
important pieces of luck in this sequence of events. Some time prior to his death in 1917, Simpson passed the shawl to his sister, Mary Simpson, David Melville-Hayes’ great-grandmother, and
on her death in 1927 it was given to her daughter Eliza Mary Smith. When she in turn died in 1966, the year I was born, the shawl once again moved down a generation to her daughter, Eliza Elise
Hayes, David Melville-Hayes’ mother. At the age of eighty-four, in 1986, Eliza Elise moved to Australia and before leaving offered the shawl to David’s two brothers. Again, the shawl
had a lucky escape, as the brothers, with little interest in its story, intended to burn it, which prompted David to take it off their hands and rescue what he felt was an important piece of
history.