life.
As you may gather, I went to the Pav on many occasions. Indeed I purchased a box there for no less than five guineas. I was captivated by the place that very first night of my new life in London. Before I had slept a single night in the Stew, I had made myself at home at the New Royal Pavilion Theatre, to give it its proper name. What was it that I loved so much there? I hear you ask. I think it was the sense of barely masked hopelessness, the ludicrous lengths to which people go in order to forget temporarily the vileness of life. Thomas Hobbes once wrote: ‘Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, but any nascent realisation that the average person may have of this may be dispelled with enough beer down their throat; enough rowdy music, sly innuendo and double-entendre; enough time with a whore on their lap. Or, for the richer desperadoes, enough opium in their blood. But it’s all a ridiculous falsehood, all a pretence, and it amused me enormously to watch the faces of the cattle at the trough, trying to make all that is bad in the world go away. Only one thing makes that disappear, and it is not something you find in a music hall. At least, not directly. At least, not until Yours Truly arrived in the neighbourhood.
But, dear lady, forgive me, I digress again. I seem to have something of a penchant for it, do I not? Let me get back to the point. There were two very important consequences to my sojourn along Whitechapel Road and my trip to the Pav. First, it led me to the women I was later to slaughter. And second, it was the place in which I was to meet your husband, Archibald, a man who ended up playing a significant role in the events which were to unfold during the late summer and autumn of this year.
I’ve not mentioned Archibald before this point. This was not, of course, due to any desire on my part to save your feelings. You must know me better than that. But now I come to the part of my story when Mr Thomson makes his first appearance.
No doubt you knew one face of the man. I knew several. We would doubtless agree that Archibald was a hard-working, intelligent, industrious and quaintly ambitious fellow. These things will be said at his funeral. Goodness, I wish I could be there! But there were other aspects to your husband, about which I imagine you had little inkling.
The Pav, that wonderful establishment, was not merely a music hall. The owners earned a tidy sum from all the four-penny pieces handed over at the admissions desk and the half-penny a pint they charged for the slops they passed off as beer, but they, like all of us, were greedy men who knew a captive audience when they saw one. Imagination not being their forte, the theatre owners turned the floor above it into a brothel.
I discovered this on my second visit to the Pav and was thrilled by the revelation. I had spent all of twenty- four hours in Whitechapel, and in my mind had already started to sketch in the details of my planned endeavour. I had decided that there would be four women. Why four? Symmetry perhaps. Four suits to a deck of cards? Four sides to a square? Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Actually, none of these ideas crossed my mind. Some, I understand, after the event, tried to find connections between my work and the doings of the Freemasons, the Anarchists, even members of the Royal Family, for Hell’s sake! None of these things were in my mind in July. I admit, I played around a little, leaving false clues, but these were for my own amusement and had no foundation in political or, the Devil help me,
Four women. I had given some thought to the methods and procedures, but had yet to select my candidates. And I did feel the need for structure here, some element of form. Because all art has form, no matter how loose it may be. When I learned of the brothel above the Pav, some of the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. I now had a fitting source for my human materials.
Now, dear lady, you may already have surmised an important fact about Yours Truly. That is, I have no desire for women. Indeed, I have no sexual drive whatsoever. I don’t know why this is, and I don’t care. It is not something I ever dwell upon. I know that for generations to come learned men will postulate and ponder, they will probe what they believe to be my mental make-up. But they will not know me as I know myself, no matter how clever those men may be. They will suggest all manner of sexual aberrations, but really, you have to believe me, there is nothing to that theory. And, quite frankly, I could not be more pleased, for what a terrible waste of energy sex is. What purpose does it serve? If you gain no pleasure from it, it is merely an act of procreation, and the last thing the world needs is more children. So I was not in the brothel for the usual reasons. I was there to paint, and to select.
Soon after I stumbled upon the existence of the brothel above the Pav, I made it my business to explore the place. Exploration is key to what I do, an essential discipline that enables me always to keep one step ahead of the police. Careful not to draw attention to myself, I rapidly learned how the upper rooms were laid out and how some of them interconnected. I soon discovered a clever little network of secret passages and escape routes built into the shell of the building.
Now back to Archibald. I met him some two weeks after arriving in Whitechapel. I had been making nightly excursions to the Pav and its brothel. To the girls, I was known as ‘The Painter’, and they all seemed to like me because I never touched them, just sketched. It was a Friday night, growing late. My model was becoming impatient, even though I had paid her twice her normal fee and all she had to do was recline decorously on a chaise. I too began to tire, not of work, but of the woman’s sighs and restlessness. Dropping my pencil on the sketchpad, I tossed her the robe she had arrived in and told her to get out. Angry now, I put the pad and pencil on to the bed and lit a cigarette. Pulling myself up from the chair and shaking my head irritably, I paced over to the door, stepped out on to the broad landing and leaned over the balcony. I could hear the noise from below, every note of the penny opera. It lurched to screeching halt and the Master of Ceremonies bellowed to the crowd: ‘What now, ladies and gentlemen? What now?’
I had seen and heard it all before, of course. I could picture the scene. The Pav’s favourite, Marie Lloyd, would be ready in the wings. I could hear her entrance music. I could picture her striding on to the stage with her umbrella. It would jam and she would declare: ‘Oh, Gawd! I ain’t ’ad it up for ages!’ And there, on cue, came the roar of laughter from the baying crowd. Oh, what simple things can please.
Then I heard a succession of new sounds. A crash, a scream, the blast of a whistle … a police whistle. Peering over the balcony, I caught a glimpse of two constables charging through the main door to the theatre. I turned on my heel and dashed for the door to the room I had rented. Except, in my startled frame of mind, I went for the wrong one and fell into the room next to mine.
I picked myself up and received another surprise when I saw the figures on the bed. Yes, one of them was your beloved husband, my dear lady. He was unaware of the commotion below, lost in his own lusts. But when I charged in, I made such a noise he jumped up, a look of horror on his face. The stupid trollop on the bed, one of the girls I knew, Catherine Eddowes, pulled a sheet up over her scrawny frame.
‘What the hell!’ Archibald blustered.
Ignoring the pair of them, I dashed across the room. Reaching the wall to the right of a small window, I felt along the cheap, lumpy wallpaper. Archibald pulled on his trousers and plucked at his jacket.
‘What’s going on?’
I didn’t even turn round. ‘Coppers,’ I hissed.
‘Oh, fuck!’
Crouching, I found the leading edge of the hidden door in a notch in the skirting. Running one finger up to waist-height, and, a few inches to the left, I found the latch, tugged it and let the door swing out. In a flash, I had crawled into the opening and was about to shut the door again when Archibald pushed himself in after me, almost crushing me against the back wall of the narrow concealed passageway behind the bedroom wall. He just managed to yank the door shut before a loud bang told us the police had reached the landing outside.
In the dark, behind the door, we held our breath. Then, using for cover the noises coming from the room — the door crashing open and the squeals of the prostitute — I groped my way along the hidden corridor. Three steps on, I reached a stone wall and felt the rungs of a short ladder screwed to the masonry. I pulled myself up in the darkness and with my left hand felt above my head for the escape hatch. My hand touched rough wood and I recoiled as a splinter slid under one fingernail. Ignoring the pain, I pushed on the trapdoor and levered it up.
Pulling myself through the opening, I found myself on the roof, the cool night air very welcome after the stifling, airless escape route. I slumped back, panting, against a sloping section of tiles. Archibald’s stocky form appeared, silhouetted against the light from a yellow half-moon. I had forgotten he was behind me. He stumbled upright and took two steps towards me before leaning back against the same section of the incline and pulling a silver cigarette holder from his trouser pocket. I could see his face in the moonlight: round and sheened with sweat, and those black dog-like eyes of his. ‘I think I owe you a drink,’ he said.
