The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper (18 page)

When I commenced this record, some months ago, it was my intention to conclude it by the description of my Millers Court exploit and the subsequent loss of my limb. This seemed to me a natural conclusion because the woman of Millers Court was my final “subject” and the accident put an end to my active life, while the many years which have since elapsed have brought to me no more than the trivial incidents of a hum-drum existence—certainly nothing worthy of inclusion in this unconventional autobiography. Forty years of hum-drum existence, mark you, gentle reader; it hardly seems right, does it? You, who can look back upon a blameless life entirely free from bloodshed except, perhaps (if you are a man), a few years of purely patriotic bloodshed, may quite justifiably feel a certain resentment at the dilatory behavior of Nemesis; in my case, at least, the daughter of Erebus is hardly what our American friends would call a fast worker. In fact if I die peacefully in bed, as I hope to do, that melancholy event will hardly seem to square with your ideas regarding the prevalence of right and justice. I know that I should have, according to your lights, an extremely unpleasant end.

Yet perhaps I am being unduly cynical in assuming in you an entire lack of understanding—I will not say sympathy—which I can hardly expect. For I have tried, in the course of this record, to convey my sense of being a mere plaything of Destiny; an instrument in some scheme of Fate. Yet what, may well be asked, can that scheme have been?

We touch here upon one of the most elusive problems of the universe. A baby is born; he is carefully tended and cherished, nursed through illnesses, educated and fed to the end that he may become a useful member of society. He gradually develops under the loving and marvelling eyes of his parents to that miraculous and efficient organism, a man. And then at the age of twenty he is killed in a futile war. Why?

A city is painfully and laboriously built; for many years, centuries perhaps, princes, architects, artists and slaves lavish upon it their wealth and toil until at last it stands completed, a monument to man's energy and efficiency. And an earthquake destroys it in a day. Again why?

Ask our philosophers the purpose of such cruel and wanton events; they will tell you they do not know. Ask our parsons; they will tell you that God moves in mysterious ways; or, in other words, that they do not know. But I, who am less competent to judge than the philosophers, though more competent, I think, than the parsons, will make bold to suggest that the catastrophes visited upon suffering humanity, as individuals or in the aggregate, are simply the caprices of a malevolent and irresponsible Power. This is admittedly a depressing doctrine, but what other can a reasoning and unprejudiced man hold?

The theory I advance is, at least, not one to be readily upset by the test of human experience. In the light of it we may cease to wonder at the tribulations of mankind. And certain “laws of nature” would seem to lend support to my belief, since most of these clearly tend to the discomfort, rather than to the comfort, of humanity. Take, for example, the “laws” of heredity.

A man is the product of heredity and environment. If he is born in a slum of thievish parents, descendants of rogues and doxies, the chances that he will grow up to be other than a dishonest scoundrel, a nuisance to himself and others, are so trivial as to be negligible. But he is merely the sport of demons; he is perfectly helpless. His fate has indeed been hung about his neck.

Are we to blame that wretched product of heredity? We may imprison or even hang him, since he is a nuisance to other citizens whose parents happened to be respectable; but we ought to do it kindly and sympathetically because, you know, he would have chosen respectable parents himself had he been allowed the chance. And I would respectfully remind you, reader, that it is due to the caprice of chance and not to any merit of yours that you were not similarly handicapped at birth.

“Ah!” you may say, yawning behind your hand, “I can see what this fellow is driving at. He is trying to make out that he couldn't help being a filthy assassin because he was born like that.”

Well, after all, I was “born like that,” O reader. Do you really suppose that if your ancestors had engaged, through generations, in the daily avocation of cutting, ripping and rending their fellow humans; investigating, and inventing perhaps, ingenious dodges for killing with the maximum amount of discomfort to their victims; blood and torn flesh the ordinary accompaniments of their everyday life; do you really suppose that with such forebears you would have been the nice person you are? Like the baby mentioned in “Punch,” you have always “kept yourself respectable,” but do not take too much credit to yourself.

So much for my theory of Providence, which you may accept or reject according to your circumstances and your capacity for thought. Paradoxical as it may seem, my own latter years have been rendered more comfortable by the belief in malevolent Destiny to which I have referred; it has freed me so thoroughly from responsibility. I have been actuated not by a deliberately cultivated wish to do evil in the sight of others; I have been driven, willy-nilly, along a course mapped out for me. The fate of every man, etc.

And as my latter years have been comfortable I might have ended this record on a note of smugness; a tame ending and very disappointing to a reader accustomed to a proper climax in his literature. But you are not to be disappointed after all; you shall have your final burst of excitement. For it has been brought home to me, quite recently, that even at this eleventh hour I may make the acquaintance of the hang-man in his business capacity unless I bestir myself very thoroughly.

—

You find me then, after a hiatus of forty-two years, living in rooms in a street not far from Russell Square. It is a tall Georgian house with window-boxes, a green door and a highly polished brass knocker; a house respectable in every sense of the word. My living-room is on the first floor; my bed-room at the back of the third.

The latter arrangement is my own choice, and this choice was not dictated by reasons of economy; for although my means have been depreciated by the war and subsequent taxation, I am sufficiently comfortable, financially, to be able to avoid pinching. The room immediately below my bed-room was occupied when I first came to the house; I could have had a room in the front, but I preferred that at the back for the reason that one of its windows communicates with a fire-escape. And I happen to have a morbid horror of fire.

My landlady's name is Hamlett. My mention of her name would appear to be inconsistent with my earlier declaration that I proposed to avoid mentioning the name of any person at present living; I hope, however, that the conclusion of this record will show that there is no such inconsistency.

Mrs. Hamlett is, so far as I know, an excellent woman, and her efforts for the comfort of myself and my fellow-boarder have been unceasing. She is tall and thin and although well past her prime has been sufficiently infected by the virus of modernity to bob her hair, which hangs beside her face and occasionally over her eyes in a series of rat-tails. She is lugubrious in manner but is fortunately free from the garrulous propensities of her tribe—a great advantage in my eyes. She is assisted by a maid-of-all-work named Minnie—a typical post-war product complete with indifferently shingled hair and artificial silk hose. She is chatty, but her chattiness may be stemmed by hints. I have rather taken to Minnie; she is a fair example of a decent English board-school girl whose education has been completed by the American “talkies,” and although she shows a tendency to lapse, occasionally, into the diction of the Bowery I believe that she has a streak of shrewd and kindly common-sense. I have a feeling that, in emergency, Minnie would show up well.

Of my fellow-boarder I need say but little. He is, I believe, a retired civil-servant addicted to the collection of stamps; this hobby he pursues with such unnatural zest that he frequently absents himself for days at a time in order to attend sales. Sales, at least, are the ostensible reason for his absences.

As for myself, you may picture an elderly and comfortable bachelor, hampered, it is true, by the loss of a leg and inclined at times to testiness and irritability. But so far as my testiness is concerned, my helots, like my associates at the club, “make allowances”; they derive, I think, a certain spiritual satisfaction from “making allowances.” I wish I were a sufficiently “nice” person to appreciate this, but I am not. Accustomed, as I have been, for many years to my affliction, sympathy, expressed or implied, still mildly irritates me.

And now, after this brief introductory chapter, let me begin the relation of those events which are to be, I think, the “last lap” of a not uneventful career.

I admitted, earlier in this chronicle, an interest in the cinema, but at the time of writing I had, of course, no inkling that I might be personally affected by this popular invention. I find it strange and rather uncanny that my peace and security may be affected, after forty years, by “the pictures.” Yet so it is.

I am a frequent visitor to the cinema and for this there are several reasons. In spite of my recent literary activities and a certain amount of bridge-playing at the club, time hangs heavily upon me; the cinema is a convenient form of amusement and, for a man of my age, an innocent one; and my experience in drawing has led me to take an interest in the technical side of the film.

This is neither the time nor the place for a dissertation on my part on the cinema, but it is desirable that the following be mentioned:

My technical interest was developed almost entirely by the study of German and Norwegian films in those halcyon days, all too brief, which now appear to have passed. The false and childish sentiment and the blatancy of the average American film used to distress me until I found the cure; I disliked the distorted impressions, conveyed by these films, of the American people. I happen to have visited America, I have met many educated Americans, and I can state quite definitely that good-class citizens of the United States are grossly libelled by the American film. I disliked, also, the grotesque ethical values exhibited in these films, I was distressed by their lack of accuracy in historical detail and, above all, I resented the American film-producers' distortion of English masterpieces of fiction in order to bring such works within the boundaries of what they doggedly and ignorantly assume to be popular taste; the most glaring offence in this connection being, of course, the introduction of an alien or wholly unsuitable “love interest.”

As I say, I disliked all this until I found the cure; and as, doubtless, I am not alone in my prejudices I will do a good deed and pass the cure on. It is simply to cease to regard an American film of the baser sort as a drama, but to view it as a satire or a farce. Once this attitude of mind has been acquired it is surprising what a lot of pleasure can be derived from an American film; for myself I have experienced the greatest enjoyment from certain films whose alleged pathos has induced unrestrained weeping in the less enlightened female portion of the audience.

Nevertheless my serious interest in the cinema has been centred mainly in the German films, and it was only by an oversight that I missed the first showing in this country of a particularly effective production called Waxworks. But, quite recently, this was revived and I was able to see it.

“Waxworks” was divided into three distinct episodes dealing, respectively, with three notorious characters: Ivan the Terrible of Russia, the Khaleefeh Haroon Er-Rasheed and Jack the Ripper. As to the historical treatment meted out to the first two worthies I am incompetent to judge; I can only testify to the artistic interest of the two parts of the film concerned. But as regards the episode of J.R., I am able to state, from definite knowledge, that it bore not the slightest resemblance either in person, scene or action to the reality; of course I should have marvelled had it been otherwise. But I was extremely interested; technically it was perfect; as a glimpse of the macabre it left nothing to be desired even by the most unwholesome intelligence.

It will be appreciated, of course, that I do not refer to this film simply for the personal satisfaction of expressing my views; I mention it because of what it led to. For, knowing my landlady to be a film-addict, I recommended her to see “Waxworks,” but without giving her any description. She took my advice.

A few evenings later I was reading in my sitting-room when Mrs. Hamlett entered with a glass of hot milk, which I am accustomed to take before going to bed. I looked up and perceived that her eyes were red with weeping.

“Why, Mrs. Hamlett, has something upset you?” I asked.

“Oh, Mr. Carnac; that horrid film you sent me to see!” she said. “If I'd known what it was about I wouldn't have gone near it!”

“Well, perhaps it was a trifle gruesome,” I admitted. “But I had no idea it would upset you, Mrs. Hamlett, or I would not have advised you to see it.”

“Gruesome isn't the word, Mr. Carnac. But it wasn't that quite; I've seen films as bad. It was that horrible part about Jack the Ripper. You see, sir, it set me thinking. There are some things I thought I'd forgotten; or at least left off thinking about, if you understand what I mean. But when I saw that horrible thing on the pictures to-night it brought it all back to me as if it was yesterday.”

“But I'm afraid I don't understand, Mrs. Hamlett,” I said. “Why should a recollection of Jack the Ripper worry you? Those affairs have been forgotten years ago; and you could have been no more than a young girl at the time. I should hardly have thought you would have remembered them.”

“My poor sister,” she said. “It set me thinking of her.” And she drew out a sodden morsel of handkerchief and began to dab her eyes.

“What about your sister, Mrs. Hamlett?” I asked. I was conscious of a sudden rush of eager curiosity, for I had more than an inkling of what was coming.

“She was murdered by that horrible wretch, Mr. Carnac,” she continued. “They said she was cut about in a shocking manner. Of course I was only young at the time, but they couldn't keep it from me, what with the police in the house, and the papers and everything. And then my poor mother never got over it. She wasn't strong, for we had a hard life when I was a child, sir. She died soon after, and everyone said it was the dreadful shock.”

I stared at my landlady as she dabbed at her eyes, and my mind was mainly concerned with the extraordinary coincidence. It seemed to me, at the time, remarkable that I should have been on familiar terms for several years with this good woman without suspecting, for a moment, that she was related to one of my “subjects.” And yet I do not see why I need have been surprised; after all, some of the women I had disposed of must have had living relatives. Rather remarkable, perhaps, that I had not before encountered one during the past forty years.

“Do sit down, Mrs. Hamlett,” I said. “Perhaps you'd care to tell me about it, if it's not too painful a subject. I need not say how sorry I am that I suggested you should see that film; of course I had no idea.”

“I don't mind telling you about it, sir,” she replied. “I shall probably be awake all night thinking about it, as it is. The harm's done now—not, of course, that I mean I blame you, Mr. Carnac. You were not to know, of course. And I don't suppose you can understand me carrying on like this for something that happened so long ago. We all have to bear the death of someone we're fond of, sooner or later, and try to forget it. But when it's a natural death it's somehow different. It's knowing that the person ought never to have died, Mr. Carnac; what I mean: not died young. That they might still be alive if it were not for a horrible brute. I know I can't explain properly, sir, but perhaps you'll understand what I mean. And then there's the feeling that the beast who murdered her has never been caught, and the thought of what you'd like to do to him if you only could. It's all very well to talk about ‘Vengeance is mine, said the Lord,' but most people don't know what it is to want revenge as I've wanted it; to lie awake at night thinking about it. And never getting it. I don't suppose you've ever felt like that, sir.”

“Well, no, I haven't, Mrs. Hamlett. But perhaps I can understand it.”

And, in fact, I was just beginning to envisage a point of view which had hardly occurred to me before. The degradation of the women with whom I had dealt so many years ago had been such as to preclude the thought that they might possess decent relatives; and I, who rather prided myself upon my imagination, had taken the women entirely at their face value as though they had evolved from the slime. Even the appearance of respectable witnesses at the various inquests and their identification of the bodies had not held for me a definite significance; I had ignored that universal phenomenon, the inter-relation of individuals, as of events; I had regarded those women as separate and disconnected unities. And now, for the first time, I was face to face with one of those repercussions which I had not had the wit to imagine.

“I was brought up in a Christian home, Mr. Carnac,” Mrs. Hamlett went on, “and before that thing happened to my sister I never thought to set myself against the ways of Providence. But when months and years went by and still the wretch was not caught I couldn't see the justice of it. It seemed to me that it must be all lies about everything being for the best, and God's goodness, and all that. For how was it that He allowed such things to happen; how was it that he allowed that wretch to go on living? It's not as if my poor sister was a thoroughly bad girl like some of the other victims; I wouldn't have you think that. She was a good, respectable girl; if she hadn't been, one might have understood it. Or, at any rate, it wouldn't have seemed quite so dreadful.”

Here was news; I tried to keep the interest from my voice as I asked: “What was your sister's name, Mrs. Hamlett?”

She mentioned a name, and, as I did not catch it, repeated it. And it was not the name of one of my “subjects.” I was conscious of a feeling of relief; after all, I had not been responsible for this good woman's distress. This had doubtless been one of those cases wrongfully and unwarrantably connected with my exploits by popular excitement. There had been several such, as I have already mentioned.

“Well, I don't want to upset you with my troubles, Mr. Carnac,” said my landlady, rising. “But when I saw that film this evening it not only brought it all back to me, but I had another feeling as well. It came into my mind that I may still live to see the wretch caught, even after all these years. And if I could have just one wish, before I go, it would be that. The wish that the murderer of my poor sister should be caught and hanged.”

“But he's probably dead long ago, Mrs. Hamlett,” I suggested. “I don't think you ought to let your mind dwell on it like that.”

“No, Mr. Carnac, he's not dead. I know he's not dead. You can call it woman's intuition, or whatever you like; but as sure as I'm standing here I'm certain that the wretch is still alive. And it's knowing that that makes me still hope.”

After Mrs. Hamlett had left me I sat for some time and pondered her revelation. I found something a trifle grotesque in her “woman's intuition.” It told her that J.R. was still living; and it was perfectly right. And yet J.R. was not responsible for her sister's death; unless, of course, the girl's name had been wrongly given at the inquest. I resolved to look this up immediately.

I possess a number of scrap-books in which I have pasted innumerable “press notices” of J.R.'s exploits: reports of inquests, letters to newspapers composed by amateur criminologists and, in fact, all those press references to the “Whitechapel atrocities” which had come under my notice. The majority of these cuttings date back to the time of the affairs, and are yellow with age, but some—mainly consisting of “popular” journalistic articles—have been published more recently. In order that these cuttings might not attract unwelcome attention if seen, they are liberally interspersed with cuttings referring to other crimes. So that in the event of a curious person examining my scrap-books—and I have never attempted to conceal them—the contents would suggest not that I am a student of J.R. in particular, but a student of general criminology.

I now took from the book-case one or two of these volumes, and applied myself to a diligent study of their contents.

In a short time I found what I sought. The name given me by my landlady was that of a girl who had been murdered some months after my last exploit; an official view had been expressed that this murder had not been committed “by the same hand” as the previous affairs, but in spite of this it had been associated, by journalists and the public at large, with the J.R. campaign.

As I replaced the volumes I reflected that since Mrs. Hamlett so definitely shared the popular view, my innocence—in that particular connection—would be of no help to me in the event of her suspicions being aroused. Not that her suspicions were likely to be aroused; nevertheless I felt slightly uncomfortable. Here was I, living in the same house with a woman who would leave no stone unturned to bring me to the gallows if, in some unforeseen manner, she obtained the slightest inkling of my unconventional past. And in the small safe in my sitting-room reposed a potential bomb in the shape of this manuscript.

I must confess that for a few moments I actually contemplated the destruction of the manuscript; but, after reflection, calmer counsels prevailed. Though I will admit that it is, possibly, a mere indulgence to my egotism, it represents many hours of labour; and anyone who has devoted some months of spare time to the painful composition of a work of literature will appreciate my unwillingness to destroy this manuscript. After all, it was, I felt, as inaccessible as it would be in the Bank of England, for the key of the safe never leaves my person. Its presence, also, lends a satirical—and even a dramatic—touch to my situation; the fact that Mrs. Hamlett daily perceives, and possibly dusts, the repository of the secret she would give so much to learn rather appeals to my peculiar sense of humour.

No, I decided; I would leave things as they were and trust to Fate. Of course I should have known, after years of experience, that Fate is not to be trusted; she has a vindictive habit of letting one down at crucial moments.