I had not been in Whitechapel since I married in June. I had thought that looking at the place with fresh eyes and the comfort of knowing I wasn’t trapped there would be fun, but it wasn’t, it was depressing, and I had more fear than I remembered. I had dressed in my dullest clothes, but being inconspicuous had always been difficult for me due to my height. I was an obvious outsider, felt only hostility and saw muck and filth. God knows what Mrs Wiggs would have made of it.
I walked past the boys and they whispered to each other. The cobblestones were covered in grease, made slippery from the rain, and I lost my footing and nearly fell. I waved my arms around like windmills to stay standing and must have looked a clown. I marched off to the squawking laughter of the boys behind me and did not look back. I passed rows of dismal rag shops filled with stained and torn costumes tossed out from the theatres, along with ripped and mouldy military uniforms, broken bayonets and rusty helmets from old wars. Sullen-faced gangs of Jewesses stood clustered in doorways and sat on kerbs with their elbows on their knees, glowering up at me as I passed them. They blocked the thresholds of their precious shops with their bodies and black looks, disinviting me before I’d even considered entering.
I came out at the entrance to the Nichol, a rabbit warren of alleys and courtyards I didn’t dare go down. I often wished I could walk down Dorset Street and see the room I had lived in with my mother, see if it matched my memories, but there was no way I would go there on my own. I stood for a moment or two on the corner and then turned. A flash of eyes and a small pale face peeped up at me through the grate of a basement, then disappeared just as quick. It was a child or maybe a young girl in a sweatshop underground, hidden away, snatching a moment for themselves from the sweaters who run such dens of human misery. Men, women and children are sweated to death if not blindness first, working feverishly in the dark, trapped, they rattle their fingers to the bone for a pittance.
On Commercial Street the busy traffic and shrieking hawkers made me feel more relaxed. It had gas lamps too, whereas the smaller roads would be pitch black at night. It was a feat that Leather Apron had managed to see the women well enough to stab them.
The corner of Osborn Street was where Emma Smith had been attacked by what she’d said was a gang of three or four, though the papers made it clear they thought it was Leather Apron’s work. They said she’d been too frightened to name him, even in her last moments. Less than two minutes’ walk from there I reached the tenement building where Martha Tabram had been found. Women carrying children stood gossiping with their hair uncovered. I continued on towards the London to see Buck’s Row, the place where Polly Nichols died. I passed the stalls along Whitechapel Road hawking celery, comic books, hairbrushes, fish; ribbons and door keys together, cabbages with trousers. The crowds slowed me down, so I chose a quieter road that had once been full of French silk-weavers. They were long gone, their livings stolen by machines and their grand houses neglected and crumbling. The names above the shops were all Jewish now, engaged in artisanal trades: cobblers, tailors and furniture makers. Shops sold books in Hebrew, and Jewish restaurants were run from houses with strange ornaments on the windowsill, the glass covered by heavy muslin drapes to guard against nosy gawkers.
At Buck’s Row I cringed when I saw all the other ladies like myself, except they were in pairs. They clung to each other, giggling, and I felt terribly lonely and missed Aisling’s arm pulling on mine. I could feel her fingers from where she used to pinch me when she was bored or tired. I only let myself think like that for a minute and then I pushed her away.
The spot where Polly had been murdered was being sold by a young girl of around ten or eleven. She was charging a ha’penny to look. It was her pavement, she told the crowd. She gave a theatrical re-enactment of how Nichols had died, pretending that her guts were being ripped out, and wearing a scarf as a bonnet. She performed with such gusto that I laughed and threw a few pennies for her entrepreneurship. It was very close to the London, only two roads behind it; you could be there in one or two minutes, less with a long stride. All three murder spots were a close and comfortable distance from the hospital. It seemed obvious that the police should make enquiries there, but I had read nothing of this in the papers.
In no rush to get back, I made my way towards Spitalfields. I walked back up Commercial Street, past Christ Church and the Ten Bells pub. The yard at Christ Church was known as Itchy Park because of the vagrants who slept in piled-up heaps like puppies on the benches there, swapping lice with each other. A few lay face down on the wet grass as if killed in battle. There was a spread of ages, but it was mostly men. Very occasionally, there was a family:
