1-3 September
Sustenance - 1
"The affair up to the present is enveloped in complete mystery, and the police have as yet no evidence to trace the perpetrators of the horrible deed."
The East London Advertiser
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The Working Lad’s Institute on Whitechapel Road, a low-ceilinged hall tucked between market-stalls and pubs, is usually empty other than for a few socialist cranks and religious sermons held by the Methodist landlords. This morning, a queue of chattering bodies stretches out from under the little wooden arch, upon which ‘Lecture Hall’ has been crudely whitewashed, and out into the street.
Some of the eager spectators appear to be working girls; a few more appear to be higher-class youths, dressed up to the nines in hats and waistcoats, chortling amongst themselves. Wise takes his place behind them and waits, patient and unnoticed, as the hall begins to fill.
Benches have been laid out across the room, in front of a makeshift table where the coroner, a dandyish, slender fellow with a finely-trimmed moustache, is shuffling papers, and a row of chairs for the jury; a constable hovers nearby, shooing back the piling forward to try and nab them.
Wise finds a free space of wall in the furthest corner and, pressing gently forward through the crush, is able to lean comfortably against it.
It’s another twenty minutes before the coroner finally decides to begin; in the meantime, the assembled crowd chatters and squabbles. Some of the men produce newspapers and awkwardly, pushing out their elbows, begin to read; an old biddy in an apron is passing around boiled sweets. Wise remains still, and small against his scrap of wall, internalising himself, letting his thoughts sink away into nothing. He’s spent too many long, sweaty nights like this in Africa, resting against a cool brick wall or the thick trunk of a baobab tree, lost in a kind of watchful rest, time slipping forward to the moment when you were needed-
“Very well,” one of the constables shouts, and has to shout it twice more before the hubbub of noise subsides. “Very well, ladies and gentlemen, very well. Please…silence, please, for the Coroner, Mr Wynne Baxter. If you please, ladies and gentlemen, if you please-“
Baxter smiles, thinly.
“We have a lot to get through,” he says, in a sharp voice that carries across the hall and brings, at last, silence. “We have Inspector Helson with us, I believe, with some of his officers, attending on behalf of the Criminal Investigation Department. We should also have Mr Edward Walker, who’s just now come from the mortuary. Is Mr Edward Walker here?”
A grey-haired, stoutly-built man, with weary eyes, raises his hand from near the middle of the packed room. The gesture itself seems to defeat him, and he drops it again, quickly. Heads are craning to stare at him from every direction.
“Come forward, please, Mr Walker,” Baxter calls. “Address and occupation?”
Walker’s thick, crude fists are clenched as he pushes forward through the crowd. He pauses, for a moment, and then says, in a near-whisper, his gaze locked firmly on the coroner,
“I live at 15 Maidwell Street, in Camberwell…and I have no occupation. Was a smith when I was at work, but I’m…not now. I’ve seen the body in the mortuary,” he continues, plunging on without being prompted, “and to the best of the knowledge it’s my daughter, but…I’ve not seen her in three years. I recognise her by her, her general appearance, and by a little mark she’s had on her forehead since a child. She’d also had two or three teeth out…same as the woman I’ve seen. She was forty-two years of age.”
The lecture hall is now entirely hushed, other than for the horrid scratching of a dozen reporters’ pens against paper; outside, a tradesman can faintly be heard, yelling obscenities.
“You said you last saw her three years ago?” Baxter asks, steepling his fingers.
The old man blushes.
“No, sir,” he says, “it would’ve been two years ago last June.”
“Was she in a good situation?”
“I don’t know,” Walker says, more sharply. “I was not on speaking in terms with her. She had been living with me, sir, some three or four years previous, but she thought she could do better…so, I let her go.”
“Was she a sober woman?” presses Baxter.
“Well, at times she drank,” Walker responds. He’s a touch defensive now; he keeps glancing around at the crowd, as if expecting them to laugh at him. “That was why we fell out, see – but look, I never turned her out. She had no need to be like this while I had a home for her.”
Baxter nods, and then asks,
“And was she fast?”
And this time someone does laugh; a high-pitched cackle, from one of the working girls loitering at the very back of the room. Her friends shush her, but Walker sees it, and scowls.
“No,” he snaps, and then relents. “She used to go with some young women and men that she knew…but I never heard of anything improper.”
“How is it,” Baxter says, “that she was not living with her husband?”
Walker is looking decidedly unhappy now; he fidgets, from one foot to the other.
“When she was confined,” he answers, after a moment, “her husband took on, er, with another woman, and they parted, he with four of their children – the fifth lives with me, sir. Afterwards she was stopping with another man…Drew, a smith by trade, but there’s been another man since. I don’t know who he is.”
Another burst of laughter from the back of the crowd, followed by an outbreak of shushes.
“You’ve been very patient, Mr Walker,” says Baxter, “and we thank you for that. One final question – is there anything you know of that could help us shed light upon this affair?”
“Oh, no,” Walker responds, at once. “I don’t think she had any enemies. She was too good for that.”
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The next witness, Alfred Malshaw, is a night-watchman from Winthrope Street, just a short distance from where the body was found. He grins and winks as he presents his statement, clearly enjoying the attention.
“I doze, sometimes,” he admits, “but a cry would’ve woken me, and I didn’t hear no cries.”
A murmur of appreciative laughter from the crowd.
“We may take it, then,” Baxter says, coldly, “that your watching is not up to much, Mr Malshaw?”
The watchman scoffs.
“It’s a long thirteen hours,” he responds, “for three shillings and no coal. But I didn’t hear nothing, and I didn’t see nothing neither, and that's the honest truth. If she'd screamed, I'd have come running."
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Dr Llewellyn is short and bearded, with a lilting Welsh accent. He sways, a little, pale-faced, as he speaks, in the stuffy confines of the hall.
“There was very little blood around her throat,” he says, “and no marks of any struggle or disturbances – which would occur if the body had been dragged. Along the right side of the face there was a bruise, running along the side of the jaw, and a corresponding circular bruise on the left side of the face, which I suppose to have been caused by the fingers – as if the assailant took hold of her face. Beneath her jawline were two incisions – one about four inches long and rising to the neck, and another circular incision…about eight inches long, severing the tissue all the way down to the vertebrae and the large vessels of the neck. Once the body was in the mortuary…I was called upon again, as it appeared there had been discovered another series of wounds across the lower abdomen, which would have occurred after the fatal cut to the throat. Jagged cuts, struck downwards, slicing through the tissue – three or four on either side. One very deep wound in particular. These cuts would have been caused by a long-bladed knife, at least moderately short…with extreme violence. The wounds were all from left to right, and might, I speculate, have been done by a left-handed person.”
He takes a step backwards, as if to steady himself.
“You are exhausted, Doctor Llewellyn,” Baxter says, gently.
The doctor simply nods and says,
“I have not slept, sir.”
“You said,” the coroner adds, “that despite the…grievous nature of these wounds, there was little blood. Could you speculate as to why that might be?”
“I would…guess,” Llewellyn says, choosing his words carefully, “that the victim would have been laid down upon her back before these wounds were administered. That blood which did escape from the body simply…soaked into her clothes.”
“But as you say, there were no signs of a struggle, no bruises other than those across her face, the estimable Mr Malshaw did not hear a cry, and we can hardly imagine that she would have laid down quietly in the street at her murderer’s request…”
The doctor makes an expressive gesture.
“A mystery, then,” Baxter says, and glances back down at his papers. “Thank you, doctor.”
“I can think of one reason she’d have been lying on her back,” someone whispers, close to Wise’s ear, and begins to snigger.
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Over the next few days, more men come to give their evidence, as feeble as it is; the police constable who found the body, and who testifies that the woman had on her a comb, a scrap of mirror-glass, and a new silk bonnet, but no money of any kind, slaughter-house workers who were toiling away nearby but who didn’t hear or see a thing, men and women sleeping in the nearby houses who didn’t hear a thing. A signalman from the railway insists that he saw a man with a knife and a wooden arm stalking the streets some weeks before the murder, but this is quickly proven to have been an invention based around the character of John James, a cheerful and harmless lunatic with one arm who begs on the streets for pennies. Polly’s husband is found, William Nicholls, a frightened-looking printer’s machinist who insists that he did not leave his wife for another woman, but that she left him, “with no occasion for doing so.” He admits to knowing that she’d found lovers afterwards, but cannot recall their names. A lodging-house keeper, Emily Holland, explains bashfully, to a chorus of hisses, that she turned the deceased woman out onto the street that night at around half past two.
“She didn’t have no money for the doss,” she insists, “and she told me she’d had it and drunk it three times that day. Said she’d head right out and be back with it, so I weren’t to let anyone take her bed. I waited up, but she never came back.
“Did you know how the deceased made her living?” the coroner asks.
“No,” Mrs Holland says, and once again the lecture hall erupts with mischievous laughter.
Finally, Baxter, looking bored, throws up his hands.
“We can do no more,” he says. “I will sum up. This…unfortunate woman, who was, according to the testimony of Mrs Holland, much the worse for drink, was apprehended and killed in Buck’s Row – her body being found some time later at a quarter to four. At first thought…it seems astonishing that the murderer should not have been seen on the deserted streets, particularly with blood upon his hands. However, we must remember that there are many in this area of London who work in slaughterhouses, and a man with a good knowledge of the alleys and routes may make his way unnoticed in the dark. We must, therefore, if we are to have a hope of catching the perpetrator, consider his possible motive. Robbery is out of the question, since she was destitute, and there is nothing to suggest jealousy or a quarrel. No incriminating evidence has been found, and the victim was murdered without having a chance, it seems, to cry out – indeed, the audacity and daring of the deed is equal to its maniacal fanaticism and abhorrent wickedness. And this murder may, indeed, be connected to those attacks which have occurred in the district over the last year. Only one thing, it seems, is clear – that a murder of a most atrocious character has been committed.”
The jury only confers for a few minutes, the noise rising once again through the hall, before the foreman, a burly, bald man in his fifties and a tatty suit, rises to return a verdict of wilful murder by person or persons unknown.
“With regards,” he adds, “to this, the latest of the crimes that’s been committed in our midst here in Whitechapel, I think that if a reward were to be offered for information about this monster who’s attacking honest folk, we might have a better chance at catching him.”
“Your comments are noted,” Baxter snaps back, but the foreman presses on.
“Why, I’ll give £25 myself,” he continues, raising an unintentional laugh from some corners of the room, “and I hope the Government will do more. The poor have souls, just like anyone else.”
“I understand,” says the coroner, struggling visibly to control himself, “that it is a matter of government policy that no rewards are offered in any case, whether the victims are rich or poor. After all,” he adds, with a sardonic little smile, “the next victim of a murder in Whitechapel may very well be rich.”
“If she is,” the foreman responds, jabbing a finger into the air, “then there’ll be a reward, that’s for sure.”
A few people in the crowd begin to clap. In his corner, wrapped in a dull mauve coat, Inspector Helson shakes his head in frustrated silence.
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For the rest of the day, it almost seems as if the Whitechapel streets are filled with nothing but women, hundreds of working-girls and lodging-mistresses and barmaids; surrounded by listeners, chattering away about ‘that poor Polly’ and how very well they knew her.
“Course, she was always drinking – but such a sweet dear-”
“She was in the Frying Pan right before she was killed, I saw her, spent all day there, though she didn’t have a penny to spend on her clothes-”
“They’re all talking about how it happened, but me, I know the real story-”
More than once, Wise sees a journalist slip money into a girl’s hand and lead her away down a side-street.
It’s almost dusk by the time he finds who he’s looking for – Mary Monk, an old friend of Polly’s, a stout girl in her early forties with a lazy eye and a sour grin. He’d met them together in one of the East End’s countless pubs, drinking themselves into a stupor to celebrate their escape from Lambeth workhouse.
Tonight, Mary is seated on the edge of Aldgate Pump, her stubby legs dangling over the edge of the stone steps, sucking furiously at a cigarette. She nods at Wise as she sees him approaching.
“Come to join me, have you, Tommy?” she calls.
Wise takes his place beside her, and accepts the preferred cigarette stub. It tastes foul.
“Shame about Polly,” Mary mutters, gazing down at her shoes.
“Damn shame,” says Wise, and passes the cigarette back.
They watch the carriages go rattling by; the cigarette burns down to a chalky brown stub. Mary produces rolling papers from her sleeve and begins to construct a new one.
“Saw her the night before she went,” says Mary. “She was same as ever, completely pissed, happy as could be. We were talking about saving up to go see the races, Chrissake. She didn’t even…”
She runs out of words; the little puffs of shag tobacco are shaking, in the palm of her hand. Wise remains silent, waiting for her to find her thoughts once again.
“Policemen took me in to see her,” she says. “Wanted me to identify her. They’d covered her up with a blanket, so you couldn’t see the worst of it, but her throat…her throat was all…”
Wise accepts the cigarette, and inhales.
“What gets me,” Mary continues, after a moment, “I mean, really gets me, is the bonnet. She spent all she had on the drink, she couldn’t even afford to stay at the doss-house no more, her fellas had all left her and the bastards who go with you on the street won’t pay more than threepence a fuck. But she had this…this bonnet, fancy thing, silk and lace. Kept showing it to everyone. So where’d she get it?”
Her eyes are wide, and pleading.
“Who bought her the bonnet, Tommy?” she asks. “Why ain’t they asking that?”
(A-and this is where you can ask Mary questions, if you like; I'll answer them, and collate them at the end into one post, which will also include the vote of what to do next.)