Jack the Ripper, killer of prostitutes in 1880s London, operated in a time and place, sadly unlike here and now, where serial killers were rare. Non-fictional accounts of the case could fill a library, and fictional treatments, direct and indirect, go back at least as far as Marie Belloc Lowndes’s
He took two, this time, and within the same hour, Inspector Abberline told us. The first victim was found this morning less than an hour after midnight, in a small court off Berner Street.
The second woman was killed in Mitre Square forty-five minutes later. He did his hideous deed and escaped undetected, as he always does. Inspector Abberline believes he was interrupted in Berner Street, because he did not…do to that woman what he’d done to his other victims. My husband threw the Inspector a warning look, not wanting me exposed to such distressing matters more than necessary.
“But the second woman was severely mutilated,” Inspector Abberline concluded, offering no details. “He finished in Mitre Square what he’d begun in Berner Street.”
My husband and I knew nothing of the double murder, not having left the vicarage all day. When no one appeared for morning services, Edward was angry. Customarily we can count on a Sunday congregation of a dozen or so; we should have suspected something was amiss. “Do you know who the women were, Inspector?” I asked.
“One of them,” he said. “His Mitre Square victim was named Catherine Eddowes. We have yet to establish the identity of the Berner Street victim.”
Inspector Abberline looked exhausted; I poured him another cup of tea. He undoubtedly would have preferred something stronger, but Edward permitted no spirits in the house, not even sherry. I waited until the Inspector had taken a sip before I put my next question to him. “Did he cut out Catherine Eddowes’s womb the way he did Annie Chapman’s?”
Edward looked shocked that I should know about that, but the police investigator was beyond shock. “Yes, Mrs. Wickham, he did.
But this time he did not take it away with him.”
It was one of the many concerns that baffled and horrified me about the series of grisly murders haunting London. Annie Chapman’s disemboweled body had been found in Hanbury Street three weeks earlier; all the entrails had been piled above her shoulder except the womb. Why had he stolen her womb? “And the intestines?”
“Heaped over the left shoulder, as before.”
Edward cleared his throat. “This Eddowes woman…she was a prostitute!”
Inspector Abberline said she was. “And I have no doubt that the Berner Street victim will prove to have been on the game as well.
That’s the only common ground among his victims — they were all prostitutes.”
“Evil combating evil,” Edward said with a shake of his head.
“When will it end?”
Inspector Abberline put down his cup. “The end, alas, is not yet in sight. We are still conducting door-to-door searches, and the populace is beginning to panic. We have our hands full dispersing the mobs.”
“Mobs?” Edward asked. “Has there been trouble?”
“I regret to say there has. Everyone is so desperate to find someone to blame…” The Inspector allowed the unfinished sentence to linger a moment. “Earlier today a constable was chasing a petty thief through the streets, and someone who saw them called out, ‘It’s the Ripper!’ Several men joined in the chase, and then others, as the word spread that it was the Ripper the constable was pursuing. That mob was thirsting for blood — nothing less than a lynching would have satisfied them. The thief and the constable ended up barricading themselves in a building together until help could arrive.”
Edward shook his head sadly. “The world has gone mad.”
“It’s why I have come to you, Vicar,” Inspector Abberline said.
“You can help calm them down. You could speak to them, persuade them to compose themselves. Your presence in the streets will offer a measure of reassurance.”
“Of course,” Edward said quickly. “Shall we leave now? I’ll get my coat.”
The Inspector turned to me. “Mrs. Wickham, thank you for the tea. Now we must be going.” I saw both men to the door.
The Inspector did not know he had interrupted a disagreement between my husband and me, one that was recurring with increasing frequency of late. But I had no wish to revive the dispute when Edward returned; the shadow of these two new murders lay like a shroud over all other concerns. I retired to my sewing closet, where I tried to calm my spirit through prayer. One could not think dispassionately of this unknown man wandering the streets of London’s East End, a man who hated women so profoundly that he cut away those parts of the bodies that proclaimed his victims to be female. I tried to pray for
Early the next morning the fog lay so thick about the vicarage that the street gaslights were still on. They performed their usual efficient function of lighting the
Following our morning reading from the Scriptures, Edward called my attention to an additional passage. “Since you are aware of what the Ripper does to his victims, Beatrice, it will be to your benefit to hear this. Attend. ‘Let the breast be torn open and the heart and vitals be taken from hence and thrown over the shoulder.’”
A moment of nausea overtook me. “The same way Annie Chapman and the others were killed.”
“Exactly,” Edward said with a hint of triumph in his voice. “Those are Solomon’s words, ordering the execution of three murderers. I wonder if anyone has pointed this passage out to Inspector Abberline? It could be of assistance in ascertaining the rationale behind these murders, perhaps revealing something of the killer’s mental disposition…” He continued in this speculative vein for a while longer.
I was folding linen as I listened. When he paused for breath, I asked Edward about his chambray shirt. “I’ve not seen it these two weeks.”
“Eh? It will turn up. I’m certain you have put it away somewhere.”
I was equally certain I had not. Then, with some trepidation, I re-introduced the subject of our disagreement the night before. “Edward, would you be willing to reconsider your position concerning charitable donations? If parishioners can’t turn to their church for help—”
“Allow me to interrupt you, my dear,” he said. “I am convinced that suffering
Edward’s “realistic appraisal” of individual problems always ended the same way, with little lectures on how to economize. “But surely in cases of extreme hardship,” I said, “a small donation would not be detrimental to their future well-being.”
“Ah, but how are we to determine who are those in true need?
They will tell any lie to get their hands on a few coins which they promptly spend on hard drink. And then they threaten us when those coins are not forthcoming! This is the legacy my predecessor at St. Jude’s has left us, this expectancy that the church
That was true; the vicarage had been stoned more than once when Edward had turned petitioners away. “But the children, Edward — surely we can help the children! They are not to blame for their parents’ wastrel ways.”
Edward sat down next to me and took my hand. “You have a soft heart and a generous nature, Beatrice, and I venerate those qualities in you. Your natural instinct for charity is one of your most admirable traits.” He smiled sadly. “Nevertheless, how will these poor, desperate creatures ever learn to care for their own children if we do it for them? And there is this. Has it not occurred to you that God may be testing
