Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 by Russell Edwards Read Free Book Online

drunkenly accosted him in the street. He stopped supporting her completely when he discovered that she was co-habiting with a carpenter named Henry Turner, a man with whom she lived, on and off,
for twelve years. He was described as short, dirty and slovenly in appearance.
    To earn their living, Turner and Martha hawked trinkets at the markets and on the streets, and by 1888 they were living in a room in a house at Star Place, Commercial Road. But Martha’s
drinking affected this relationship too – she was given to fits when very drunk – and sometimes she and Turner would separate, during which time he had no idea how Martha conducted
herself. With no other way of supporting her serious drink habit, she probably turned to casual prostitution. In July 1888, the couple parted for the last time. After Turner left her, Martha left
the house in Star Place without paying the final rent and took up lodgings in Spitalfields, at 19 George Street, the dosshouse next door to where Emma Smith had been living.
    At the time of her murder, Martha was described as plump, 5 foot 3 inches tall with a dark complexion and dark hair. At approximately 4.50 a.m. on 7 August 1888, she was found byJohn Reeves, a dock labourer, lying on her back in a pool of her own blood on the first-floor landing of a tenement block where he lived, known as George Yard Buildings. This was in
Whitechapel’s George Yard, which today is called Gunthorpe Street, and is still one of the narrow cobbled alleyways that survive from the old East End.
    When he saw the body, with her skirt pulled up to her waist and her stomach exposed, Reeves ran to find the nearest policeman, who turned out to be PC Thomas Barrett, on duty in Wentworth Street
close by. After rushing to the murder scene, PC Barrett immediately sent Reeves to fetch Dr Timothy Killeen from his surgery at 68 Brick Lane. The doctor arrived at 5.30 a.m. and pronounced Martha
dead at the scene.
    The body was soon taken to the mortuary in Old Montague Street, where a photograph was taken and a post-mortem conducted. In his report, Dr Killeen observed that Martha had received thirty-nine
separate stab wounds to various areas of her body, including one to ‘the lower part’, and apparently there was a great deal of blood between her legs. This three-inch wound was, in all
probability, to her genitalia. The lungs were pierced multiple times, as well as her heart, liver, spleen and stomach. Dr Killeen also believed that two different weapons had been used; one was a
small pen knife, no bigger than a few inches, which had caused thirty-eight of the wounds, the other weapon was a large knife around six inches long or more, thought to be similar to a bayonet. It
was the cause of a single injury which had penetrated the breastbone, and according to Dr Killeen this wound alone was sufficient to kill her.
    But there is evidence she may have been strangled before she was slashed, which fits in with the Ripper’s pattern.
The
Illustrated Police News
of
18 August 1888 reported that she had received severe injuries to her head, the result of ‘being throttled while held down, the face and head so swollen and distorted that her real features
are not discernible.’ The number of wounds and the savagery of the attack put the case outside the normal run of East End violence, and provoked a growing public alarm.
    George Yard Buildings had many residents and it’s remarkable that nobody in the tenement heard any cries or commotion during the night, which I believe supports the theory that she was
strangled before the stabbing occurred. Significantly, just over an hour before Martha’s body was found, a young cab driver named Alfred Crow had climbed the staircase and seen somebody lying
on the first-floor landing, but as he was used to seeing people sleeping rough there, he took little notice. The lights inside George Yard Buildings were turned off at 11 p.m., so it was probably
not light enough for him to