GEORGE HUTCHINSON

The Ripper Connection
The theory that this woman was another Ripper victim was strengthened when a cab driver told police that a “well
dressed man” hailed him, 5 promising double fare if he would drive full speed to Chalk Farm Station. The presence of
Chief Inspector Donald Swanson (the lead investigator into the Whitechapel murders) at the site where the body was
found was enough for reporters to print what bystanders were already thinking: the devil had again fled Hell for London.
The Pall Mall Gazette led with this the following morning. “The unfortunate victim was seized from behind and
was at once rendered speechless by one large, clean cut of a knife, as in the case of the
women murdered in Whitechapel.” 6 The hasty conclusion is forgivable considering some
similarities appeared to exist in the modi operandi of both killers. Mary Kelly’s throat
was severed to the spine like the woman lying dead in the Hampstead Mortuary, and the
crimes were apparently perpetrated under cover of night and without a single witness.
The description given by the cab driver reified speculations about the Ripper’s physical
comportment. According to the Gazette, police were looking for a man “aged about forty,
nearly six feet high, with a dark moustache, and wearing a light suit and peak cap.” 7 This
description is strikingly similar to that given by Thomas Ede of a suspicious looking man
he thought might have been the Ripper. The man was described as 5ft 8in in height, about
35 years of age with a dark moustache and whiskers. He wore a double peaked cap, dark
brown jacket and a pair of overalls and dark trousers. 8 Regrettably, both descriptions are
generic enough to have fingered virtually every other white, male Londoner living nearby,
and thus proved unhelpful in either case.
Though Swanson left the scene certain he saw none of his nemesis’ handiwork in the
mutilated woman’s corpse, Scotland Yard took no chances. A constable woke Chief Constable
Melville Macnaghten to tell him about the murder at Crossfield Road. Macnaghten relayed
back a message to Inspector Bannister: he would meet him at the mortuary at first light.
Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten
The Pram
Meanwhile, two and one half miles away, Police Constable John Roser was walking his beat in Hamilton Terrace, when
he stumbled upon something curious. Leaning against the garden wall of No. 35 was a baby’s perambulator, a brown rug
draped over it. The handle was broken and the pram seemed wet, though it had not rained. Roser saw blood. He pushed
the pram back to the Portland Town Police Station.
Roser and Inspector Holland, who was on night duty, studied the contents of the pram, finding “partially congealed
blood” in the seat and human hairs sticking to its side, a waterproof apron, 9 and a butterscotch candy 10 wrapped in
robin’s egg blue paper, bespecked with blood. 11
5 “The Hampstead Murders.” Pall Mall Gazette, 25 October 1890. p7.
6 “A Woman Brutally Murdered at Hampstead.” Pall Mall Gazette, 25 October 1890. It seems the PMG also published the theory of
Jill the Ripper, connecting and exploring the possibility it was even Pearcey, in an article titled “The Whitechapel Horror” published
on Valentine’s Day, 1891.
7 Ibid.
8 “The Man Not Found.” The Echo, 17 September 1888.
9 The presence of the waterproof apron particularly would later support theories first proposed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and later
expanded by William Stewart (1939) that Jack the Ripper was a woman; more specifically a midwife. The theory was not without
logic. Those who wore such aprons commonly practiced the bloody arts of midwifery, surgery, or butchery and could roam the busy
streets of London wearing a besmeared apron without exciting much notice. Though criminal historians like F. Tennyson Jesse, as
well as a preponderance of evidence to the contrary have since debunked the theory that Jack was a Jill, the idea of the Ripper as
a woman proved to be pernicious. In 2006, Ian Findlay, professor of Molecular and Forensic Diagnostics (Marks, 2006) claimed he
could extract DNA from a single cell taken from a strand of hair up to 160 years old. At the time, conventional DNA sampling
methods required at least 200 cells. With samples taken from evidence housed at the National Archives, he extracted DNA from the
gum used to seal the so-called “Openshaw letter” from which he created a profile. Ultimately, Findlay’s results were inconclusive,
but the global press reignited the Jill-the-Ripper theory because Findlay deduced from his partial profile that it was “possible” the
Ripper could be female.
10 “The Victim on Her Way to her Fate.” St Pancras Gazette, 5 November 1890.
11 “Trial of Mary Eleanor Wheeler Pearcey.” Old Bailey Proceedings Online. December 1890, www.oldbaileyonline.org.
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