The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper (5 page)

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Chapter 4

Soon after my fifteenth birthday my father inherited a considerable sum of money. An aunt of his, whom I had never seen, died, leaving him the bulk of her property.

A letter advised him of the death but contained no intimation of his good fortune, and my father at first hesitated to take a journey across London for the purpose of attending the funeral. Also he did not possess a pair of black trousers, apart from his dress clothes, and was reluctant to buy a pair in which to assist in the burying of an old lady he had not seen for twenty years.

However, my mother pointed out that since he was one of the sole surviving relatives, it would “look very bad” for my father to be absent on the occasion in question. After some discussion he grudgingly agreed to go, subject to the difficulty of the trousers being overcome without too great an expense. Whereupon my mother fetched the dress trousers, and when she had shown by ocular demonstration that the black of these was almost indistinguishable from the black of his frock coat, he gave in. On the morning of the funeral he departed in a thoroughly bad temper. The weather was cold and wet and he would have to walk to Seven Sisters Station. He had refused to buy a pair of black gloves and went out of the house smoking a pipe which, my mother thought, was indecent in the circumstances. Apparently it had not occurred to either of my parents that he might benefit financially by the death.

The mourner returned in a very different mood. It was quite evident that he had been drinking; I was as well able to identify the symptoms in the flushed face and the glazed eye as my mother was by that time. My mother began to weep when she saw him.

“Where's your umbrella?” she asked from behind her handkerchief.

“Left it in the train,” said my father. “Damn the umbrella!” I laughed.

“John!” cried my mother. “Before the boy too!”

“Damn the boy!” cried my father jovially, slapping me on the back.

“John!” wailed my mother again. “And you've been drinking!”

“Drinking?” said my father. “Me? Nonsense. A drop of grocers' port at the wedding-breakfast—I mean funeral-breakfast. Nothing more.”

“I don't believe you,” cried my mother. “And I only hope none of your patients met you on your way home.”

“Cheer up, Mrs. Gummidge,” my father said. “And guess what I have to tell you.”

I think my mother must have had a flash of intuition. She paused and stared at him, her crumpled handkerchief held half-way to her face.

“Aunt Madeleine has left me most of her money!” cried my father.

My mother sat motionless. But her woebegone expression gradually changed to one of delight and satisfaction. Forgotten were my father's tippling and low behavior; so powerful is even the mention of the word “money.” “How much?” asked my mother, breathlessly.

My father admitted ignorance of the exact sum, but mentioned a probable amount which took my breath away. Then he removed his silk hat, threw it up to the ceiling and endeavoured to kick it as it fell; but he was unequal to the dexterity demanded and reeled against the table, knocking over a jug of water and clutching the table-cloth. My mother began to giggle, and that unusual manifestation on her part was not the least surprising event of the evening. I had never before heard her giggle like that, and stared at her open-mouthed.

Then my father raised himself from the edge of the table and, throwing his arms round my mother, dragged her from her chair and began to caper around the room with her. This boisterous behavior brought my mother back to a sense of reality; she disengaged herself and stood patting her hair and smoothing her crumpled dress, while my father swayed in the centre of the carpet.

Later on, after a somewhat sketchy meal, my father left the house despite the earnest pleas of my mother, and as he had not returned by nine o'clock I was then sent up to bed. It must have been past mid-night when he was brought home speechlessly drunk by a patient. I was awakened by the disturbance and, creeping from my room, viewed over the banisters the (to me) entertaining sight of my father being hauled upstairs by my mother and the neighbourly Samaritan.

In this way my father entered into his inheritance.

—

It was some time before my father was able to handle his fortune. His first state of excitement and geniality gradually faded into one of irritation as the weeks and months went by and nothing was heard from the executors. I gathered that a thing called “probate” was responsible for the delay, and that this probate was some piece of legal machinery designed for the convenience of lawyers who, being by nature dilatory, if not actually dishonest, were glad to avail themselves of it as a means of keeping an inheritor out of his just rights for as long as possible. Finally my father, in a sudden fit of exasperation, took his hat and dashed off to Town “to see what they meant by it.” He succeeded in wringing from the executors (or someone involved in the business of clearing up the estate) the sum of five hundred pounds on account of his legacy; to me this sounded an enormous sum.

At once my father began spending with a casual prodigality which delighted and excited me but which filled my mother with alarm. He entirely re-furnished our drawing-room, bought several appliances for the surgery—including a new set of glistening dissecting scalpels in a leather case—half a dozen suits for himself and as many dresses for my mother, a new suit and two pairs of boots for myself and a number of cases of whiskey and wine. I had never before seen cases of wine—in the past drink had been more or less smuggled into the house—and I assisted with enthusiasm in unpacking the bottles from their straw coverings and arranging them according to my father's directions in a cupboard under the stairs.

Next I was removed from Dr. Styles's academy and sent to the grammar school as a kind of provisional step until a better school could be decided upon. Lastly the small, slatternly day-girl, who had up till then assisted my mother in the house, was dismissed and a general servant to “sleep in” was engaged. My mother, poor woman, was gratified at this step; she had always felt keenly the social inferiority entailed by her inability to keep a “regular servant,” and her realization of a modest ambition was doubtless untinctured by any prescience of the sinister events to come. For it is one of the alleviations of this earthly existence that we are none of us able to foresee what the future holds for us.

The name of the new-comer to our household was Mary; I cannot recall her second name. She was about twenty years of age I should imagine, and was of the type usually referred to as “buxom,” being a well-developed young woman of rosy complexion and by no means ill-looking. It is very difficult for an old man of sixty-nine to recall and describe accurately his feelings and reactions as a youth to another person, particularly when those early feelings have been, at a later stage, strongly influenced by a particular series of events. When a certain thing has come to pass, it is easy to recall the series of events and manifestations of character which led up to it as a logical conclusion; to blame ourselves for the lack of insight which would have allowed us to perceive the trend of things. In the same way I can, in the light of after events, form a fairly accurate idea of the character of this girl Mary, but it is difficult to separate from it my first estimate of her.

I know that I took a sort of furtive interest in the girl from the start, mainly, I think, because she was the first personable young woman with whom I had come into any sort of close contact, and to have her living in the house with us was something of a novelty. She was a country girl with none of the fresh innocence fallaciously ascribed to the average country girl, but on the contrary all the coarse, dirty knowingness which is far more common in the country girl than in her town-bred sister. Her attitude towards me, after the first few days, was a blend of what I might call lip-serving respect and a sort of knowing familiarity as though we shared in common a somewhat salacious secret. Both to my parents, and to myself in their presence, her manner was reserved and respectful, and I have no reason to suppose that my mother had any doubts as to the wisdom of employing Mary in a household which contained an adolescent son and a husband whose habits were open to criticism.

As for myself I found Mary a source of slight embarrassment for I was afflicted by the shyness common to my age; not only was I fully aware of that shyness but I felt that it afforded Mary a certain amount of amusement. I avoided her as much as possible and it was, perhaps, as well that my mind at that time was fully occupied by the interests of my new school and with my hobby of drawing, with which I was making considerable progress.

Before dealing with the climax of this period of my life, I must try to convey, so far as my lack of practice as a writer will allow, a general picture of myself and my environment. For myself I was then a youth of sixteen, on the whole fairly quiet and well-behaved, considerably exercised by brooding thoughts on half-understood matters and of a type of mind tending distinctly towards the morbid. My taste in literature was for the unhealthy and bizarre and found ample food in my father's extensive collection of books, of which he was unwise or irresponsible enough to allow me the free run. Many of these books were of the kind referred to in booksellers' catalogues as “curious”; amongst them I recall two volumes: Roberts's Treatise of Witchcraft and John Cotta's Triall of Witchcraft, both of which, published in the seventeenth century, must have been fairly valuable and the contents of which fascinated me extremely. He also possessed a large tome whose name I have forgotten which contained many plates portraying the administration of various ingenious forms of torture. The only books in connection with which a half-hearted and ineffectual censorship was exercised were my father's medical works; and, on the whole, my favourite author was Edgar Allan Poe of whose works my father had the complete edition, published in 1875. Over these volumes I would pore for hours.

Apart from reading and “home-work,” practically my whole spare time was given up to drawing, though I must admit that in the home circle this occupation obtained very little encouragement. My mother was quite incompetent as a critic and my father was frankly indifferent. On one occasion when, during the course of a Sunday morning walk, my father asked me suddenly whether I knew what I would like to be when I left school and I replied, without hesitation, “An artist,” his only comment was, “Oh my God!” He did not then pursue the conversation and to this day I have no idea what his plans for me were or if, indeed, he had any.

My father's accession to comparative wealth (though since he had not yet handled the bulk of his legacy it was only potential wealth), had certainly effected no improvement in his character. He was fast becoming a confirmed drunkard and had lost all interest in his professional practice. This practice had fallen steadily away since the evening on which one of his patients had assisted him home following the celebration of his inheritance; and the advent of a patient at the surgery was rather an event and, to him, a boring event. He drifted through his days in a casual, indifferent manner varying between a hectic geniality and a petulance which, on occasion, flared into a ferocity in which he would actually smash furniture. In one of these fits I recall that he deliberately swept from the mantelpiece in the sitting-room the whole of the useless jumble of knick-knacks with which it was garnished, and then passed out of the house, leaving my weeping mother to gather up the fragments in a dust-pan—for she was too proud to allow “the girl” to do this for her in the circumstances. On a more serious occasion my father, returning home drunk after my mother had retired to bed and being presumably incensed by her remonstrances as to his condition, flung open a bed-room window and pushed out as much of the furniture as would go through it. Most of the bed-room crockery was smashed to atoms in the front garden below, together with the dressing-table mirror which my father succeeded in tearing from its fastenings. When my mother, dressing herself hastily and summoning me, passed down to the front garden in a pathetic attempt to salvage the goods before daylight revealed her shame to the neighbours, the entire grass-plot was littered with splintered furniture and fragments of china. Unfortunately for my mother's remaining shreds of pride the disturbance had not passed unheard by our neighbours, and two of them kindly came out in a half-dressed state and assisted us to carry in the wreckage. I think that in all my mother's shame of the night's work her greatest embarrassment was caused by the fact that a chamber had lodged on the top of a small tree in the garden where, by a miracle of equipoise, it hung jauntily in full view. The helpful neighbours were tactful enough to ignore the shameful object, but after they had retired to their respective houses my mother again crept into the front garden and, with great difficulty, dislodged the article and carried it indoors.

The next day my father went out and bought a complete suite of bed-room furniture, which was delivered the same evening.

It may be assumed that my mother failed to maintain even a semblance of happiness in the circumstances which now obtained in the household. The few little luxuries which resulted to her from my father's legacy were more than offset by the state of harassment in which she lived. She degenerated into a shabby, weeping, almost slinking figure, seldom leaving the house except to attend church meetings in the evenings, and leaving all shopping expeditions to the care of the girl Mary who, in that connection, showed herself to be honest and capable. Had my mother been of stronger character she might have fought my father's habits and averted the tragedy which followed, but evidently she lacked the force to do so. Her self-pity was stronger than her desire to save something from the ruins, and she sought refuge in “the consolations of religion.” She became a regular attendant at the local church and a rabid participant in the several vapid activities of that body; and so by her frequent absences from home in the evenings she unconsciously collaborated in the series of events which I am now about to relate.

BOOK: The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper
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