The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper (15 page)

I had hoped that my enterprise of the 7th August would dispose, once and for all, of my unfortunate craving; that, having allowed myself to experience a satisfaction, I should have permanently satiated that craving. But I soon discovered, with rather mixed feelings, that the assuagement was purely temporary.

Although in the past I had always been fascinated by blood and, during later years, by knives, the urge to shed blood had only occurred on isolated occasions and then suddenly and unexpectedly. But now my experience had resulted in actual knowledge of the satisfaction to be derived from blood-letting; from a slumbering beast, awakening only at rare intervals, my “complex” had become an ever watchful thing awaiting an opportunity to glut itself.

And, in addition to the satisfaction of the act, I had discovered a new and unexpected source of interest: the excitement of the attendant circumstances. I began to realize the fascination exercised by the sport of hunting when the prize is the death of the quarry, and the forfeit that of the hunter. And being a comparatively young man I was not unaffected by conceit on realizing that I had set myself against the forces of law and order and come off best.

I had not then, and never have had, any feeling of contempt for the police. Our police force is, I should imagine, one of the most capable in the world; with certain newspaper offices it shares, probably, the honour of being the most efficient organization in this country. But the police, although able and industrious, are not omniscient. They cannot find their man without some traces to guide them.

Nevertheless I congratulated myself on having avoided the attentions of the police; and I was afflicted by the sin of pride.

Now the fact that I had baffled the police (if the omission to leave clues may be regarded as a process of baffling) was, in itself, an incentive to me to try my luck again. The game of “hare and hounds” seemed to offer a fresh source of interest in addition to that attached to the actual commission of homicide. But I knew that every enterprise I carried out would mean a fresh risk, and that the risks would be cumulative. To make a hobby of the thing would not be homicide but suicide.

So I curbed my desire—for a few weeks.

But towards the end of August my craving was such that I decided to satisfy it once more. This would entail another risk of detection which, in conjunction with my former risk, might be considered to give an arithmetic product equal, not to two risks added, but risk squared; for it was possible that the police already held some trifling clue regarding the first case, useless in itself, but possibly of value if combined with any intrinsically trifling clue which I might leave in the future. I must therefore look well to my precautions, acting on the experience gained during my first exploit.

I considered that first occasion: where I had been right and what mistakes I had made.

I had been right in my choice of subject, locality and time. The first had practically placed herself at my disposal, and the locality had proved to be most suitable. The time had been well chosen, being late enough for the streets to be uncrowded, and yet allowing me leisure in which to reach home before the early risers at dawn.

As for my mistakes, I had, so far as I could estimate, made two. I had removed the Malay dagger from its usual position and its absence might have been observed by my landlady. There had been no need for me to take the dagger at all; the scalpel alone would have been sufficient. And by confining myself to one knife on this second occasion I should reduce the risk of dropping a weapon by half.

My second, and more serious mistake, had been in allowing myself to become blood-spattered. I should have remembered the admonition of my old school-fellow's pork-butcher father when killing his pig to “stand clear.” Or I should have despatched my subject more carefully; instead of violently stabbing her I should have cut her throat. I need hardly enter into the technical reason for this alternative method.

On future occasions—for I now admitted the probability of several future occasions—I must endeavour to avoid getting my clothing stained. The obvious plan was to wear a protective garment, but as it was impracticable for me to assume an overall in which to work, my long black overcoat would appear to fill the bill; for I could remove and fold it as I had done before.

The refined reader will doubtless view these calculations of mine with distaste; but they were necessary. No one enters upon even such a relatively trifling affair as a summer holiday without some preliminary planning. How much more so, then, is planning necessary in such an enterprise as that of mine, where the smallest slip may lead to the most unfortunate consequences? And I record my schemings in order to show that the homicidal maniac theory, to which I have earlier alluded, cannot be regarded seriously. I question whether a lunatic, such as popular imagination pictures, would have been capable of such preliminary precautions. He would more probably have simply run amok without regard to consequences.

But I was careful; I held my anticipatory excitement in check the while I looked at my problem from all angles, examining it logically and critically. Surely no symptoms of lunacy here!

—

I fixed upon the 30th August as the date of my second adventure; but on the afternoon of that day I suddenly bethought me of another point.

On the first occasion I had not attempted to explain my lateness to my landlady, beyond the insufficient statement that I was visiting the theatre. My reason for not enlarging upon that I have already mentioned. But it now occurred to me that if several occasions arose—and this seemed extremely likely—it might flash across the mind of my landlady that at those times when certain “atrocities” had taken place I, her lodger, had been absent from my rooms until an exceptionally late hour. I could guard myself against her possible suspicion by inventing someone in the nature of what Oscar Wilde calls a “Bunbury”—a sick friend or relative whom I frequently visited; this idea I decided to ponder at my leisure. But pending some such invention, was it, I wondered, necessary for my landlady to know I was absent at all?

By leaving my rooms after mid-night I could easily reach the East End of London in time for my purpose. My landlady retired, as a rule, before eleven, and unless she knew that either I or her other lodger, who occupied rooms above my own, was out, she bolted the front door before going up to bed.

But the good woman slept at the top of the house, and it would be quite easy for me to descend unheard to the front door, unbolt it and slip into the street, releasing the catch afterward by the aid of my latch-key. My only risk lay in the possibility that my fellow-lodger might hear me; but this, I thought, was negligible. And as to his being out until late on the same evening: if he were, the door would be left unbolted, and I should know by this that he was in his rooms. There was no possibility of his returning home after I had left and bolting me out.

My plan seemed a perfectly safe one, and I resolved to try it experimentally.

—

I left the house that night just before twelve. I had heard my landlady go up to bed, and was also aware of my fellow-lodger's presence in his room by his movements overhead. I crept softly down the stairs, unbolted the street door and let myself into the street without mishap. Henrietta Street was deserted, and it was not until I got into Covent Garden that I met anyone.

I walked through into the Strand, and made my way eastwards. I was wearing my long, black overcoat, and in the breast-pocket of my under-jacket reposed my scalpel.

Soon after 12:30 I entered Whitechapel High Street; I was keyed up by excitement, though by an effort of will I kept my brain cool and collected. I was inconvenienced on this and other occasions by certain purely physical symptoms which, since I do not wish to appear indelicate, I will not specify. My feelings, as a whole, were probably similar to those of my younger fellows of a few years since when waiting to “go over the top.”

As I came into Whitechapel I paused and looked around me. The hunt was on!

The tale of my wanderings would be a mere repetition of the early part of my first adventure; but there was this difference: that this not being Bank Holiday night the streets appeared to be settling down at a slightly earlier hour.

I passed many women of the “unfortunate” class before selecting my subject. In most cases the women were either walking in couples, or the streets in which I passed them were not absolutely deserted; or for some other reason I hesitated to address them. I actually spoke to one woman, but as I stood with her on the kerb I observed a light spring up in a neighbouring window and the shadow of a face—man's or woman's, I could not tell which—peering through the broken window-pane. I left the woman with a suitable excuse.

Finally I met a woman in what I think was Court Street who seemed to answer my requirements. The time must then, I think, have been nearly three o'clock in the morning; but as I had left my watch at home I am uncertain. The short street was otherwise deserted and the windows were in darkness.

I hesitated when this woman spoke to me, for she seemed to be slightly less degraded than the usual run of the sisterhood; but I feared to delay longer and, after a brief colloquy, I accompanied her down the street.

She led me into Bucks Row, a narrow slum of typical two-storied East End dwellings, deeply shadowed by some tall warehouses which arose on one side of the street.

The woman gave me no trouble whatever; she did not even cry out. I made a better job of this than I had of my first subject and, with the exception of my hands, I was unstained when I had finished. I left her lying in the gutter and left Bucks Row by way of Bakers Row.

I reached home at about four-thirty and let myself in without mishap. The house was quite silent as I crept upstairs.

Compared with my later adventures this was a somewhat dull affair.

My first exploit had caused but slight interest, but my second aroused a certain mild excitement. It seemed to be recognized that the two affairs were the work of “the same hand” and the death of Mrs. Smith in April (to which I have alluded) was recalled and quite unwarrantably classed with the other two. Even at that stage the word “lunatic” began to be whispered.

I write as if I had my hand on the pulse of public opinion, but of course my only knowledge of what was being thought and said was derived from the newspapers—and from my landlady, who was a newspaper in herself.

This good lady seemed to take as much interest in bloodshed as I did, though in her case I have no reason to suppose that her interest was other than purely academic and theoretical. The “Whitechapel Murders,” as they were now called, quickly gripped my landlady's imagination; she revelled in them and appeared to memorize all the details she read. I verily believe she could have repeated to me without an error a list of the “organs penetrated” in each case according to the medical testimony; but, of course, she was too refined to do so.

Still she contrived, in the course of her household duties in my rooms, to discuss the affairs with me very freely, while skimming delicately over such details as she considered indelicate; in fact, she began to bore me. She was not an original thinker; her opinions were the conventional opinions of the cant-ridden populace. “Poor creatures!” she would say, at frequent intervals. “It does seem dreadful!”

“Why ‘poor creatures'?” I asked her on one of these occasions. “Surely women of that kind are better out of it?”

“Oh, don't say that, sir!” she cried.

“But don't you think they are?” I persisted. “You believe in Heaven, don't you, Mrs.—?”

“I go to church regular,” she replied, with dignity. “But going to Heaven when you die and having your inside cut up are two very different things!” (Being a woman, you see, she was quite unable to stick to the point.)

“How would you like having your stomach cut open?” she added, losing a trifle of her delicacy in the excitement of the moment.

“I don't think I should mind whether I had my stomach cut open or whether I was hanged,” I replied reflectively. “I doubt whether it would make much difference in the long run.”

“I do,” said my landlady, with a toss of the head. “I want to die in my bed.”

“Well, if you really want to, Mrs.—,” I said, “I expect you have a nice, comfortable bed handy.”

“Ah, it's all very well for you to laugh, sir,” remarked the good lady. “We never know what's coming to none of us!” With which dark truism she picked up the tray of breakfast-crockery and left me.

I mention this conversation because it gives a fair indication of the popular point of view; and her voracious interest in the “Whitechapel Murders,” which grew later, in common with the interest of the public as a whole, to a state of morbid hysteria, must be recorded because it led to something which appealed to me as an exceedingly good joke. The incident in question occurred after my disposal of Annie Chapman in Hanbury Street.

—

On Friday 7th September, I allowed myself another “night out.” I find it slightly difficult to explain why I came to work again so soon after the Bucks Row incident, but I rather think I allowed myself to get worked up into an undue state of excitement through the interest caused by that second exploit.

I believe that had my affairs passed with but little public notice I should have indulged my craving only at long intervals and only when that craving grew too strong to be withstood. I should have observed the procedure suggested by that Duke of Norfolk who used to say, according to De Quincey, “Next Monday, wind and weather permitting, I purpose to be drunk.” I should have fixed definite periods between my indulgences, saying to myself: “Next month, on the thirtieth, I propose to go out and kill another woman.” And I should have held myself rigidly in check until the date decided upon.

But I really believe—and, since I desire to be candid, I must admit—that at that stage my feelings were not so far removed from those of the modern cocaine addict. I had discovered and experienced a novel and exciting indulgence; but the craving for it grew by what it fed on. A “vicious circle” was formed; every experience resulted in an increased desire for further experience.

And when my imagination pictured the increase in popular excitement which would be caused by another demonstration on my part, I was influenced. I fear there must be something of the mentality of the modern film-star in my make-up. An appetite for notoriety.

Be that as it may, I set out on the night of 7th September deliberately intent upon another of my indulgences.

I decided, as before, to avoid any suggestion that I had been away from my lodgings on that evening but, in a spirit of fantastic playfulness (as I must admit), I developed this suggestion. In place of mere non-suspicion, I would provide a definite idea that I was at home. Something not far short of a real alibi.

On Friday morning I told my landlady I had a bad cold in the head.

The good lady was concerned for me and as, during the day, my “cold” got worse (one can do a lot with pepper), she told me that “a stitch in time saves nine” and that she was going to take the matter in hand. She told me I ought to be in bed, and I reluctantly agreed. I consented to go to bed.

She brought up to my room a can of nearly boiling water and a tin of mustard; she filled my wash-hand basin with hot mustard and water and insisted that I should sit for some time with my feet soaking in this. I followed her instructions, wrapped in a dressing-gown. Then she made me a basin of onion gruel which, under her eye, I was forced to consume (I detest onions) and while she removed the mustard-bath I got into bed.

This was at seven in the evening.

I lay in bed during that evening reading “Marie Roget” and “The Purloined Letter” first by daylight and, later, by the light of my candle. At about eleven my landlady knocked at my door and enquired whether I was “all right.” I reassured her in a sleepy voice and then heard her pass up the stairs to bed.

At mid-night I arose, dressed in my oldest suit, put on my long overcoat, placed the scalpel in my pocket and crept softly down the stairs. The front door was bolted; I unfastened it and let myself into the street.

Before one o'clock I was in Whitechapel.

—

It seemed to me that on this evening I passed more policemen than I had been used to seeing in the district. Whether or not an increased number had been posted as a result of the recent “atrocities” I do not know, but I think I probably magnified the number since my mind had been dwelling upon the notoriety according to my exploits and I was prepared to find a keener watchfulness. The police were, as a rule, walking in couples; but this was not uncommon for that period; for in this vice and crime-ridden slumdom the officer of the law was regarded, and sometimes treated, with marked hostility. The “bashing” of policemen not infrequently took place.

The streets, and particularly the smaller lanes, were very badly lit at that time, and I moved about in a semi-darkness which seemed, to my imagination, to be a hot darkness. It was not the ordinary warmth of a September night which I experienced, but a kind of feverish heat due, as I realized later, to my own pitch of excitement coupled with the fact that I was really developing a cold. For, you will remember, I had taken a hot mustard foot-bath and a basin of gruel which had given rise to a heated condition of the body; and I had arisen from my bed and gone out into the night air. A very foolish thing to do, alibi or no alibi, and I remembered having shivered as I passed along Henrietta Street.

I felt almost intoxicated on that night as I walked from street to street. The isolated patches of light cast on the pavements by the street lamps appeared to me like islands separated by seas of sinister shadows; shadows in which policemen, harlots and drunken men moved silently and furtively. When I stepped out of an island of yellowish light and waded towards another island I was passing through a macabre region peopled by ghost-like beings, some of whom were inimical to me, but one of whom I should catch and slay. And on entering on every belt of darkness I thought: “Shall I catch her here?—Or in the next one?—Or in that swamp of shadows at the end of the street?”

This whimsical fancy kept me employed for some time, but in spite of my feverish view of my surroundings I did not lose sight of the fact that I was in the streets. I was not labouring under delusions, but only under slightly nightmarish illusions to which I deliberately surrendered myself. I kept my wits about me, and when I observed policemen I avoided their strict scrutiny. I altered my stride to one calculated to pass them in one of the pools of shadow, and not under a street lamp. I did not court their attention, but I did not obviously avoid it by crossing the street or retreating the way I had come. In any case few of them gave me more than a passing glance.

I met the woman at the corner of New Street. She looked over fifty years of age (though she was only forty-seven, it appears), she was miserably dressed and had on a grotesque bonnet which looked as if it had been rescued from an ash-bin. She seemed perfectly sober and accosted me in the usual terms.

This woman proved to be of a chatty type. She ambled along beside me, occasionally touching my arm with her scraggy hand. She told me she had been out since before mid-night “Lookin' for some friend.” “My landlord wouldn't let me 'ave no doss cos I 'adn't the money,” she told me. “So I bin walkin' about since. I 'ad another try and wot d'yer think the—'ad the sauce to say? Said I bin eatin' 'ot spuds: and if I 'ad the money for 'ot spuds I could pay for my doss. The dirty—. All right, I sez to 'im, I'll show yer. 'Ot spuds indeed. Don't yer go a-lettin' of my doss, I sez, 'coz I'll soon get the money. Yus, you can larf, I sez; I ain't one o' them smart young gals, I sez, but I ain't one o' them poor old tear drops wot a blind sailor wouldn't look at. I'll be back soon, I sez, what with this new bonnet of mine an' all. And, I sez, if you wasn't a—” And so on.

“Of course 'e ain't really my landlord,” she went on. “Wot I mean, 'e only keeps a doss-'ouse where I sleeps when I ain't 'ad much luck. Though I 'ad a room all to meself once; I ain't always bin out o' luck. I wouldn't mind bettin' you've got two rooms, dearie, ain't yer? Yer look as if yer might 'ave. Wot I mean, anyone might mistake yer for a real gent, the way you talk an' all. Reminds me rather of an engineer wot I took up with once—though 'e was a dirty bahstad 'e was. Treated me real dirty. You are comin' along o' me, dearie, ain't yer?”

I reassured her.

“Yus,” she continued, reminiscently, “I 'ad a room once; an' a canary. A real live canary in a cage wot used to sing. When you 'eard 'im you might almost fancy you was in Eppin' Forest. But I lost 'im. I fell out o' luck, as you might say, an' 'ad to pawn 'is cage an' let the poor little bahstad loose. A cat got 'im. —I didn't 'arf 'owl when a cat got 'im. I often think o' that canary. —Like Eppin' Forest 'e was.”

We had by now come into Hanbury Street and my guide led me into a doorway. “Don't make a row,” she whispered.

I did not know it at the time, but I took extraordinary risks that night. I learned later from the newspaper reports that nineteen persons lived in that house, and that the landlady's son often came into the yard at the back at unforeseen times to eject tramps and other undesirables. And it was into this back yard that the woman took me; a narrow, littered place approached by a few steps.

“We shall be quiet 'ere, dearie,” she whispered. And she was perfectly right.

—

On the morning after the Hanbury Street episode the joke occurred to which I have alluded.

I had reached home without mishap, found the door unbolted as I had left it, let myself softly into the house, bolted the door and gone up to bed. I did not know, and my landlady had forgotten, that my fellow-lodger was out.

This man, who occupied the two rooms above my own, was a middle-aged man of a shy and retiring disposition. He was short and of poor physique, rather consumptive-looking, and had a thin layer of ginger-coloured hair turning grey. He wore very high collars round a long, thin neck, and his eyes were magnified to a goblin-like size by thick-lensed spectacles. I think he was a solicitors' clerk, but of this I am not certain.

On the evening of the 7th of September, this individual had gone to visit some friends or relatives living in an outer suburb; he either omitted to advise the landlady or she, in the mild excitement of her ministrations to me, forgot his absence. She bolted the street door in the usual way. I, on my return from Whitechapel at about five on the following morning, also bolted the front door for I was, of course, ignorant of my fellow-lodger's absence.

But he managed to miss his last train and had to walk home from his friends' house.

Soon after I had got into bed, and just as I was dozing, I heard a stealthy knocking at the front door. I will confess that the sound filled me with a momentary alarm; it flashed into my mind that by some extraordinary chance I had been seen and followed. That, in fact, the police stood without. That is one of the penalties of unconventional conduct like mine: even a knocking in the small hours may promote uneasiness.

I listened to the repeated knockings which gradually grew louder as they drew no response. I had no intention of going down. Then I heard my landlady's footsteps passing my door, followed in a few moments by the sound of bolts being withdrawn and a murmur of conversation. Steps ascended the stairs and then I heard movements in the room above me and realized, with some relief, the truth. It was my fellow-lodger whom I had bolted out.

In the morning, when I was taking a late breakfast, my landlady burst into the room. She was panting and the normal mauve of her complexion had changed to a pasty white.