Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Mary Ann Nichols

chapter 1

Saturday September 1st 1888

Whitechapel: chapter 1

Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols

Saturday, September 1st 1888

Early in the morning we're rounded up by Wiggins, and faced with our sleep-filled faces and our reproving glares, he explains to us that he received an urgent message from Dr. Watson requesting our help. Less than two weeks after the resolution of the "Lionised Lions" case, we're now heading back in the direction of 221B Baker Street, our carriage driving at a fast pace in the morning fog.

Wiggins rings the bell, Mrs. Hudson opens the door, and apparently unsurprised at our visit, she invites us up to the first floor. Watson is waiting for us in the living room, pacing.

"Ah, gentlemen, I'm happy to see you!" Watson exclaims, "Come in and sit down, I'll explain why I asked you over." Watson settles into a sofa and we copy him. We're surprised by the absence of Sherlock Holmes, but the care Watson puts into not speaking too loudly tells us that his flatmate must be sleeping in his room. On the corner of the fireplace, balanced on the coal bucket, is a case containing a hypodermic syringe and a bottle of morphine.

"Your message worried us a bit, doctor..." begins Wiggins.

"I understand, please excuse me... How can I explain it to you? I've been watching the same spectacle for a week, without daring say a word to him. His brilliant mind does not stand, as he says himself, stagnation. The absence of work, puzzles, investigations, or mysteries to solve plunges him in the most depressing state of lethargy. Without counting his rituals which worry me to no end."

"You're talking about these injections," interrupts Wiggins as he points at the syringe.

"Yes, I'm a witness to these sessions, three times per day. He alternates morphine and cocaine, to the detriment of his health. One would believe he's incapable of facing daily life in its banality."

"I'm afraid I don't see how I could help Mister Holmes," answers Wiggins. "Who better than you to do so? You're his friend, and a doctor on top of that."

"I know Wiggins, you're entirely right. If you knew the feeling of guilt which, each night, overwhelms me; my conscience is reproaching me for my lack of courage to protest when I see him destroy his health this way."

Watson pauses before continuing: "Let's get to the point of my message, Wiggins!" Head Inspector Abberline came here himself to request the help of the greatest detective on the Whitechapel murder case. As Holmes isn't in a state to receive him, I fashioned a vague excuse and assured him that I'd send our best people to help him as soon as possible. Our reputation is at stake."

"You can count on us, Dr. Watson; we'll find Abberline and start right away. Give Mr Holmes our salutations when he wakes up." "Thank you Wiggins, I'm sure that Holmes will be happy with our initiative if he ever comes back to reality, and maybe he'll even be able to help us in our noble undertaking."

SW NEIGHBOURHOOD

2 SW

Langdale Pike is in the middle of an animated uproar between audience members of La Dame aux Camélias who, like him, defend Marguerite Gautier, and the more numerous moralists and defenders of common decency, who support Père Duval. He nevertheless finds a moment to extricate himself from the debate and tell us that he knows nothing about the Whitechapel crime.

However, he promises us that he'll try to write up "the long list" of skirt chasers from proper London society who regularly visit the market of compensated copulation in the "Babylon of Vice".

5 SW

Out of need for information, we stalk the stacks of criminal cases in the London Library looking for crimes similar to that of Mary Ann Nichols. The only case which catches our attention is that of murderers William Burke and William Hare. To make money, the two Scots would bring the bodies of recently deceased persons to Dr. Knox in Edinburgh, who would then use them as dissection subjects. In order to speed up the process, Burke and Hare killed sixteen people over nine months by smothering them after having given them strong doses of opium, in order to sell them to Dr. Knox. Finally ratted out by Hare, Burke was hung on January 28th 1829. In an ironic twist of fate, his remains are said to have ended up on Dr. Knox's table.

8 SW

At the Diogenes club, old potbellied bourgeoisie, comfortably installed into overstuffed chairs, read their newspapers silently while smoking cigars and drinking brandy.

Warned of our arrival, Mycroft Holmes greets us in the small restful lounge reserved for visitors, the walls of which are covered with shelves of ancient books.

After having offered us an excellent cigar from Curaçao, Mycroft invites us to take a seat on a sofa and then settles himself in turn, making the tired springs of his seat groan under the influence of his weight:

"Gentlemen, I'm curious to know what brings you here, no doubt a mysterious mission given to you by my brother?"

"Actually, we're investigating the death of a woman, killed yesterday morning in the Whitechapel neighbourhood: Mary Ann Nichols, a woman of low birth."

"Oh... well I don't quite know what to tell you, gentlemen," answers Mycroft from a cloud of smoke. "You see, I don't visit the East End neighbourhood. I deplore the living conditions of these poor souls. I saw in the newspaper that it was a terrible crime. This is going to start Sir Robert Anderson's tenure as the head of the C.I.D. under a bad omen. It would seem that the head of the police, already heavily criticised, has chosen a bad time to take his vacation in the south of France. This sort of business will not add to his popularity unless the murderer is quickly caught. If my memory is good this is not the first murder of the type in that area. I wish you good courage, gentlemen, and give my brother my best the next time you see him."

12 SW

"Freddy Broken Fingers is an Italian hoodlum who isn't worth the rope used to hang him," Lestrade tells us with a dubious air. "He used to rampage with his band of pickpockets through rather than in the neighbourhoods of the City. He was the kidsman to these young rascals as they say in the slums. I was given to understand that he hadn't been seen in a while. Good riddance!" May the wolves eat each other!"

13 SW

A police officer leads us to the office of Inspector Lestrade.

"Listen," answers Lestrade self-importantly, "I don't have time to talk with you: Head Inspector Donald Swanson, in charge of this case, has demanded swift results, otherwise heads will roll. He delegated the fieldwork search to a so-called specialist of the East End, Inspector Abberline of the C.I.D. With our help, this foul case should presently be resolved."

"Why do you believe that, Inspector?" asks Wiggins.

"It's obvious: this isn't the first crime that this malfeasant has perpetrated, it's a racket organised by a neighbourhood gang which is blackmailing these poor women by promising them an illusory protection... There are many you know, like the Nichols Gang or the Blind Beggar Gang. She must have refused to pay and things went sour; the authors of the racket will not remain unnoticed for much longer. Blood Rowed this time, and fear should untie tongues. I've asked for the files about one death, as well as two closed cases: Millwood and Wilson. In addition to a few files of my own. I'm still waiting for this information from both archives, but I'm confident.'

"Were similar cases resolved this way recently?"

Okay, listen, I'd love to keep this conversation going with you, but I have work waiting for me, and truth be told it's a common and miserable crime the likes of which are too often seen in that neighbourhood! Now, if you'll excuse me... Good day, gentlemen."

Leaving Lestrade's office, we try to find a policeman who could tell us if Inspector Abberline is in the area.

"You're not in luck," a cooperative officer tells us, "Frederick Abberline came by this morning to see Head Inspectors Swanson and Moore, but he just went back to the Commercial Street police station."

22 SW

When we enter H.R. Murray's laboratory, we are assailed by an acrid and pestilential odour. Professor Murray, wearing a holed shirt spotted with multicoloured stains, is in the middle of a work session. Frozen in front of the column of a still over a gas-heated burner from which emanate blueish vapours, he mutters as he leafs through a chemistry book.

"Well isn't that strange, but bloody hell, it really is an azeotrope, though... Ah Higgins," he says after having noticed our presence, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

Wiggins, sir, it's Wiggins…. We'd like to know what are the results of your analysis in the death of Mary Ann Nichols?"

"Who is that?"

"The woman found disemboweled in Whitechapel last night."

"Ah... Sorry, gentlemen, but strangely, no elements have been forwarded to me about that case! Instead, why don't you look at this, I have in this flask a mixture of acetone and chloroform..

We leave the laboratory, putting Murray and his chemist's jargon behind us without him even noticing our departure

23 SW

At Millbank, we interrogate one of Grainger's cellmates.

"That guy was a real bully, behind his angel's face Because of his harelip, we had nicknamed him The Rabbit Without warning, he flipped out and attacked two other inmates, who were a lot bigger than he was. You should have seen how he laid them out. The other two said that Grainger didn't fight fair, but no one really mocked him after that Grainger still saw his sentence extended by a month, and he got a taste of the lash and of the dark cell."

NW NEIGHBOURHOOD

74 NW

Evelyn Nichols lets us in and calls for her brother, who comes out of the kitchen. William Nichols is a hard and peevish man, with a vulgar and wrinkled face, nonetheless illuminated by incredibly clear blue eyes.

He is in his forties, and his blond hair is already thinning. "We've been married 22 years, and our separation was but the latest in a long series," he explains to us while smiling sadly. "Her old man no doubt told you that I had an affair with his nurse; it's true. But Polly had left me at the time. It was the fifth or sixth time. I was still giving her money to live, until I discovered that she was prostituting herself and seeing another man, a Drew... And times are hard for me too... But she certainly didn't deserve to end up like that."

WC NEIGHBOURHOOD

5 WC

No driver from the Central Carriage Depot remembers taking a client on between 2 and 4 o'clock on the night of August 30th, in the area around Whitechapel Road and High Street, Brick Lane, or Commercial Road.

"You know, for us, in that neighbourhood, other than the main streets, we don't venture around too much. No clients and too risky!"

13 WC

"Freddy Broken Fingers, real name Frederico Albericci. Arrested for theft of clothing, fraud, brawling, and assault in a public place while intoxicated... A repeat offender and jack-of-all-trades, always looking for his next scheme. Recently he had been accused of pushing unfortunate women into prostituting themselves, all while ensuring their protection, but as none of them ever testified, he was released."

14 WC

"I finished the preliminary research requested by Scotland Yard," Disraeli informs us, "Lestrade seems especially driven right now; would you like to take a look before I pass this on?"

October 27th 1887: Before assistant police chief, the honourable R. C. Huxley and Mr. C. Hoskins, was heard William Grant Cork, alias Grainger, for having savagely assaulted a woman named Maisie Hackel. He was suspected during his trial of belonging to the Nichols' gang. Condemned to three months of imprisonment at Millbank.

January 7th 1888: Philip Rackstraw and his accomplices, all members of the gang of crooks known under the name of the Blind Beggar Gang for their rackets of all sorts, invaded the establishment of a coffee maker on Fairclough Street. After having broken the windows and struck the customers with knives and brass knuckles, the seven culprits began to loot in earnest. They took all the wines and liquors they could. The police, called by the manager, rushed in, but the band had managed to escape, other than Philip Rackstraw who was focused on forcing the register open. Condemned to seven weeks of prison in Newgate.

February 25th 1888: Annie Millwood, widow, 38 years old, admitted to the infirmary of Baker's Row's Asylum after having received knife blows at leg and lower abdomen height. Closed in May 1888.

March 28th 1888: Ada Wilson, 5 Maidman Street, seamstress, 30 years old. March 28. Assaulted at home by a man who stabbed her in the neck twice. The aggressor was in his thirties, has a black moustache, a worn bowler hat, and a light-coloured pair of trousers. Closed in June 1888.

April 11th 1888: Before Reverend J. Graham and Mr. N. Lucas Calvert, was heard Jarvis Hilder, woodworker in Commercial Road. After leaving met Mrs. Rainbow and her husband, Jarvis Hilder, who once had a relationship with Mrs. Rainbow, offered them a drink at a neighbourhood coffee maker. At nightfall, Mr. Rainbow, who had drunk more than was reasonable, fell asleep on the table and Jarvis Hilder then told Mrs. Rainbow that to prove to her that he was no longer thinking about the past, he wanted to return to her the letters that Mrs. Rainbow had once written to him. As he lived nearby, Mrs. Rainbow followed the woodworker. Once at the house, the spurned lover suddenly charged tone, called her a prostitute, and rushed Mrs. Rainbow to rape her. As she offered fierce resistance to him, Jarvis Hilder armed himself with an auger and dealt blows to her arms and head. Drawn by the screams of the victim, officers were able to arrest the madman. Condemned to eight months in jail.

June 17th 1888: Before Mrs. R. Eyre and H. A. Fowler and Dr. Court, was heard Alphonse Holbrook, coal seller, for the attempted murder of Florence Wagstaff, a seamstress who had just married. While Mrs. Wagstaff was returning to her household in Leytonstone, Mr. Holbrook, recently spurned by the young woman, rushed her and dealt her a violent knife blow to the chest. Mrs. Wagstaff lost consciousness but, thankfully, she was wearing such a heavy corset that the breast was barely hit. Alphonse Holbrook was condemned to ten weeks of hard labour.

July 2nd 1888: Charles Stiff and Vincent Nunn were surprised as they were administering a beating to two prostitutes on Sandy's Row in Whitechapel, then fled all the while insulting the constables. The taunted officers fell into an ambush, and were struck down and brought to heel by a gang of five pimps. Condemned to a month of hard labour.

July 4th 1888: Charles Squibb, alias Squibby, accused of having stolen a watch and a fob, and having threatened, while pulling out a knife, to stab the eyes of the policeman who had just arrested him. Condemned to four weeks of prison in Newgate.

July 5th 1888: At the Thames Tribunal was heard Kitty Winter, a shopkeeper from Middlesex Street market, for theft of clothing. She had lured to an alley of Little Somerset Street a child of eight that she had stripped of clothing. Surprised by a police officer making his rounds, Kitty Winter and her accomplice, who was keeping watch, attempted to flee.

The officer caught up with the thief, but the accomplice managed to flee. Two weeks of solitary confinement.

August 19th 1888: Before Admiral J. C. Rowley, was heard Robert Scarber, a carter who, coming home at one in the morning with his cart, was called out by a public woman on Commercial Street. Furious, he came down from his seat and rushed the girl that he pelted with kicks, after having thrown her to the pavement. Due to the shouts of the unfortunate, officers ran in and three of them were barely enough to master the carter who turned his fury on them. Condemned to fifteen days of jail.

17 WC

The Somerset House employee tells us that Scotland Yard asked him for only civil records and death certificates:

Mary Ann Nichols wedded in 1869 a printer named William Nichols. They had five children, the oldest of which is twenty one years old and the youngest nine. A divorce for fault was filed in 1881, due to an alcoholism problem and a character described as bellicose. Three years later, her former husband stopped paying her a pension, accusing her in front of the tribunals of living in sin with a blacksmith called Drew. William Nichols currently lives with his sister Evelyn, at 74 Oxford Street, NW.

Emma Smith: 62, George Street, Spitalfields, widow and occasional prostitute of ripe age, was returning to her house around midnight, on April 3rd of this year, when she was attacked by three younger people at the corner of Brick Lane and Flower & Dean Street.

After having raped her, they plunged an object into her vagina, tearing her perineum. Her face bore traces of cuts. She died on April 6th of peritonitis, after having described her assailants, who were never arrested.

"Nothing else?"

"No, I think that Lestrade asked us for this out of habit. He confided that he was following a better lead."

EC NEIGHBOURHOOD

30 EC

We find Henry Ellis in his office, sitting on a chair that he has tilted to rest against the wall. Visibly satisfied, he is reading his own article in today's Times:

"So, my friends, what do you think of my investigation? Everything I know I put in the article, so I can't really see what more I could tell you."

We keep from telling our friend that he obviously hasn't spent much time stalking the narrow streets of Whitechapel to write this.

"Do you remember another similar case?"

"There actually was another particularly violent murder in Whitechapel in early August: also a prostitute. But honestly, we only wrote a few lines about it.... The violence in that neighbourhood is becoming far too ordinary!"

35 EC

"Don't tell me, my dear Wiggins, that Holmes has set you on the track of Mary Polly Nichols' murderer? What an abominable story!" We were discussing it last night with colleagues from the Pall Mall Gazette and the Star and we all agreed to admit that we couldn't find a hint of motive to this crime, other than the savagery of a sadistic brute.

This murder reminds me of Martha Tabram's, found dead in the stairwell of the George Yard Building, at the beginning of August. That prostitute was lying in a pool of blood, having been stabbed thirty nine times with a knife! Another prostitute, Mary Ann Connolly, known by the nickname of Pearly Poll, said at the time she had gone out with Martha Tabram in the company of a corporal and a simple soldier. After many hours of discussions at the Frying Pan, Pearly Poll left with the corporal as 11:30 tolled, looking for a dark and isolated corner...Martha and the soldier left to go to George Yard with a similar goal in mind. For the requirements of the investigation, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson had the various garrisons of the Tower of London and of the Wellington barracks, parade in front of Mary Ann Connolly, who didn't recognise the soldiers in question.The press, oddly, didn't make much of it."

36 EC

After having gone beyond the high soot-stained granite walls garnished with spinning metal points of Newgate prison, we're guided by a guard through the yard.

We walk along the press yard noticing that a second set of long sharp points, aimed downwards, make any attempt at climbing the inside walls impossible. Finally, we end up in a small paved yard in which the governor personally watches over the prisoners circle of exercise. He explains to us in a learned tone that the population of Newgate isn't necessarily the kind we could expect:

"You see, mister detectives, among these thieves and killers ready to do anything in order not to have to work and live honestly, there are in the end very few to come from Spitalfields or Whitechapel. We have here a former colonel from the British army, a teacher, a bank employee... vermin, gentlemen, if we aren't careful, sneakily slips into all layers of our society."

37 EC

"No notable telegraphs today."

38 EC

After having found the office of the Head Medical Examiner empty, we go down to the basement of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital looking for the autopsy room.

To our great surprise, we stumble upon a group made up of four workers and a dozen young women accompanied by children, who, while eating chips from old newspaper cones, contemplate through a glass window seven bodies exposed to the gaze of all on inclined tables of black marble. The bodies are bare, and wetted by rivulets of water coming from faucets located over each of the tables. Evidently, none of the visitors has come here to identify anyone. Suddenly, Sir Jasper Meeks rushes into the room and starts frogmarching this little crowd towards the exit.

"I'm sick of these Sunday strollers who come to the morgue as if it was a day out at the zoo!" fumes Meeks. "How can I assist you, gentlemen?"

"We're investigating the crime which took place in Buck's Row, a certain Mary Nichols," Wiggins promptly answers.

"I was actually in the middle of rereading Llewellyn's report. If you knew, what a mess!" Two residents couldn't think of anything better to do than strip and clean that poor woman, before Llewellyn's passage. The imbeciles!

Can you explain to me why they didn't start off by bringing the body to me here? Their morgue is no more than a quick stop on the way to a mass grave! Sure, the hospital is a bit further away, but bloody hell, it's clear that this is an unusual crime which requires the greatest of attentions. Seeing what little information I have, my conclusions can't be much different from Llewellyn's." Sir Jasper then reads us his colleague's report:

"This is a woman in poor condition, five foot three, round, roughly forty three years of age ... five teeth are missing ... a slight laceration on the tongue."

"Any marks or blows?" asks Wiggins.

Meeks ignores him and continues his lecture: "A bruise on the lower part of the jaw, on the right side of the face. This could be the result of pressure from a thumb. We can also notice a round contusion on the left side of the face, which could have also been inflicted by the pressure of many fingers."

"Due to being strangled?" asks Wiggins.

"No after," Meeks answers dryly, "they're almost at cheek level. I concur with Llewellyn that they're post-mortem."

Meeks continues his lecture: "On the left side of the neck, we can observe an incision starting directly under the ear and extending as far as an inch under the jaw. On the same side, but almost an inch lower, is the start of a circular incision when ends three inches under the right jaw. This incision completely tore all tissues to the vertebrae."

"We must wonder if he didn't try to decapitate her," Wiggins exclaims.

Meeks continues his lecture in a neutral tone: "No blood on the chest, nor on the body or on the clothes."

"But her dress should have been stained with blood?" Wiggins asks in a surprised tone.

"If she had been standing, surely, but I doubt it," comments Meeks before resuming: "No other wounds on the body, until we come to the lower part of the abdomen. To the left we find a large incision which tore the flesh. Many more incisions crisscross the abdomen. On the right side, three or four blows are identical and go from top to bottom. The blows were delivered from left to right and could be the work of a left-handed person. All wounds were caused by a long-bladed knife, moderately sharpened and used with great violence. The report ends here."

"Which of these wounds caused the death?"

"That's the whole question, Wiggins. It's a point of divergence between Llewellyn and I; he believes that the cause of death was due to the evisceration of the victim or the deep wound that slit her throat. In my opinion, this poor woman was strangled first."

"At what time was she killed?"

"I can't tell you precisely, as her temperature wasn't taken on location," curses Meeks. "Nonetheless, the body was still warm when it was discovered, and Llewellyn noticed no signs of rigor mortis. She must have been discovered roughly an hour after having been killed."

"Unlike what you said earlier, your conclusions seem to differ from Llewellyn's."

"Listen, gentlemen, I don't have the habit of throwing discredit on a colleague, not having been on the crime scene. However, I can't hide that some of Dr. Llewellyn's observations seem erroneous to me."

51 EC

"Freddy Broken Fingers, now, you're really interested in him?" Porky says in a surprised tone as he leans over the bar while wiping a glass with his rag. "He's a weasel of many talents. One time he got in trouble with a former boxer who broke the fingers of his right hand after having beaten him up. That's how he got his nickname. He has many strings to his bow. At one time, he was associated with young buzzers, kids who would empty the pockets of passersby who would stop to watch the magic tricks he'd perform in the street. Gotta admit, he's good at that, even with his crooked fingers. 'Professor' his street urchins would call him. He also worked with a skinner who was his bait, a certain Kitty... The last time I saw him, and it was a while ago, he hung around with a boozer who had a bun in the oven, and he wanted her to get rid of it. I think that at that moment Grainger was looking for him, so he made himself discreet."

"Grainger?"

"Grainger, now that's bad Irish blood of the worst sort. He's a part of the Old Nichols gang who are extorting the unfortunate women of the Thieves Kitchen. He's nicknamed The Rabbit because of his harelip. I've heard it said that he'd just went back to Cork and joined the artillery corps to let himself be forgotten around here. And that's not a bad thing..."

52 EC

Under the light of an oil lamp, Porky is enjoying a plate of brined mussels. Upon our arrival, his rubicund face splits open with a wide smile.

"Wiggins, how are you? You look frozen my boy, a little pick-me-up looks indispensable to me... What will it be?"

"A beer will do fine, Porky, thanks... Would you happen to have some information about the murder of Mary Ann Nichols?"

"Instead of a little foam you should have a hot gin, my friends!"

We agree and Porky tells us what he knows of poor Mary Nichols while sliding us our glasses one at a time on his bar.

"All I can tell you is that the girl was a lady bird who loved to fly; I've sometimes seen her here hang out her lantern with her friend, Nelly, a real rumour-monger we've nicknamed The Telegraph.

If you want to spread a rumour in the East End talk to Nelly, she's better than any newspaper! They were drunk the two of them, looking for clients while singing atop their lungs... I know that they'd frequent many night asylums in the Thieves' Kitchen, the White House on Flower and Dean Street, and the one on Thrawl Street, kept by that bastard Stanford, a former highwayman who reinvented himself as a manager after having been sent to visit the discipline mill. Porky turns back, taking the time to serve other clients. Where was I?... Ah yeah, the poor Polly... She also frequented the Frying Pan regularly. In any case, I haven't seen her for at least three weeks. Must say that she probably didn't leave Whitechapel all that often. That's where the poorest of the poor live, the worst paid workers, with the thieves, the crooks, the beggars, and the prostitutes, all pell-mell. Most are Irish like I am, or Jewish. That neighbourhood is a real breeding ground for future jailbirds... I hear that she'd been gutted? Some guys able to send a halfwit to the next world for some pennies isn't what the East End is lacking, but one game to slice open the lower belly of a streetwalker... I'm drawing a blank. Knock them around, sure, but that! It's bad for business, as we say. And whoever isn't toeing the line is causing more trouble than he's fixing. There's already been a cold breeze in the neighbourhood since the murder of Martha Tabram this summer. Sure that wasn't as much front page material in the press, but I can tell you that there's a number of people that put in a bad spot. We see less and less people hanging about."

"Like who?"

"I don't know precisely. Before, I had Freddy Broken Fingers who'd come in and keep me in the loop as to what was going on in Whitechapel. Gotta admit that he had a gift for being in every scheme and that he always fell for a different harlot. But it's been a while since he has shown up, too..."

"Freddy Broken Fingers?"

"Yeah well, it's been nice and all, but I've got work to do. Come back and see me sometime!"

If, during this case, you'd like to interrogate one of your informants on the topic of "Freddy Broken Fingers", head over to the lead with the previous number (and the same neighbourhood code), if it exists. The lead will, in that case, always begin with "Freddy Broken Fingers". If that's not the case, then ignore it, as your contact has nothing to teach you on that subject. (These extra leads are free. Don't count them).

98 EC

We arrive at the Pickfords' warehouses looking for the man who discovered the body of Polly and we're directed to a moustachioed man, waiting on his cart, near the eastern exit of the building:

"Yeah, I was the one who found the body, not Robert!" states Charles Cross while frowning his thick bushy eyebrows.

"But I've already told everything to Inspector Abberline..."

"Yes, yes,... But we're leading an independent investigation, would you mind telling us your story?"

"Well, alright. I was leaving to come work here, I'm a carter, and I have to cross all of Whitechapel. As I'm going along Buck's Row, I see a dark silhouette on the ground, near the door near the stables. I thought it was a tarpaulin at first, as it was still dark out and there was fog on top of that, that morning. I come closer and I realised it's a woman.... There was her bonnet on the ground next to her. I first thought that she was drunk. So I lean over to see what had happened to her. At that point, I hear footsteps, I turn around, it was Robert, another carter from around here, so I call him over to come and see. I touch the woman's hand and see that it's cold. I then tell Robert that she must be dead. To check, he places his hand on her chest and tells me that she's still breathing. She was all askew, her skirt raised to her waist, we thought she had been outraged. We covered her up and left to get the police; we found an officer, Mizen his name was, who was making his rounds at the corner of Hanbury and Old Montague. We told him what we had discovered on Buck's Row. Then we headed straight to work, Robert and I, by going along Hanbury Street. We split up a bit before Commercial Street, since Robert works at Corbett's Court."

"What time was it when you found the body?"

"A bit before four o'clock I'd say. I was late."

"Was there a lot of blood?"

"No, I hadn't noticed any."

"You met no one just before?"

"No, not that I can remember, but as I told you, it was pretty dark. In any case I didn't see anyone else in the street."

100 EC

At the Commercial Street police station, we enter the office we were pointed to, and discover a rotund man of average height, relatively young but already balding, and wearing sideburns. He's busy looking at a defective fob watch through a large magnifying glass. The item is disassembled on the desk, and the inspector is reassembling the minute parts of its precision mechanism using a pair of fine tweezers.

"Inspector Abberline?"

"Yes.... come in, allow me to finish and I'm all yours, gentlemen..." answers Abberline, without looking up.

"Wiggins, and these are my colleagues. We come on behalf of Mister Holmes for the investigation of the Whitechapel murder."

A smile cracks on the inspector's face, who stops his work on the spot.

"You see, fixing things relaxes me... I'm yours!"

Abberline pulls out a black notebook from his desk. "According to my preliminary investigation, Mary Ann Nichols, called Polly, was forty three years old. She was a poor unfortunate, long ago estranged from her husband, tended to drink, and as with many others in Whitechapel, forced to prostitute herself in order to get enough to pay for a night in a shelter or a room in the best of cases. She had been living at the White House, on Flower and Dean street, a night shelter, for a week. She was seen around 11 at night the night before yesterday on Whitechapel Road, then around half past midnight at the Frying Pan, a neighbourhood watering hole. Then she was seen at the Thrawl Street night shelter by the owner, who refused to give her a bed as she had no money and was drunk. Then, around 3:45 yesterday morning, two passersby who were headed to their work, discovered her body in Buck's Row. Her dress had been hiked up to her stomach. Then, officer Neil, who was making his round, arrived barely a few minutes later."

"Could you give us the identities of the passersby who discovered the body?"

"The one who discovered the body is Charles Cross, a carter at Pickfords."

"Do you have a lead, Inspector?"

"I've delegated to Lestrade the research into recent deaths under similar circumstances, as well as assaults and cases closed after the fact. He is quite confident about one specific case, Smith, and we may need to investigate on it. Nichols' murderer may have left clues which would allow us to link to these ancient cases. Come back and give me your report tonight."

Holmes isn't taking part in this investigation: you can follow up to fifteen leads (including this one and the ones previously followed). Then move on to the questions.

E NEIGHBOURHOOD

1 E

We knock for a while at the door, until an old shrivelled woman, with hollow cheeks but a vivacious eye, opens it.

"What do you want?" She asks us in a broken voice.

"Good evening, Ma'am, we would like to talk to Ada Wilson," answers Wiggins.

"That's me."

"Are you Ada Wilson?"

"Yes, Edna Wilson, that's me."

We then realise that this poor woman doesn't hear very well anymore and Wiggins begins talking much louder.

"No, Ada, Ada Wilson."

"Ah, Ada!" No, there's no..."

This is when, from a small nearby yard, alerted by Wiggins' shouts, comes another old woman who turns out to be her daughter-in-law.

"It's okay granny, I'll talk to these gentlemen." She then talks to us in a low tone:

"Don't pay attention, the poor woman is losing her mind and is as deaf as a post."

"I was afraid that these would-be ruffians came to kill us and take our money," adds the grandmother who remains gripping the door she's holding with her bony hands. "I hear what they tell me clearly, they're looking for..."

"Go back in, granny," cuts in her daughter-in-law. "I'll take care of these gentlemen, you're old and you shouldn't stay there like that in the breeze..."

"Old yourself!" replies the old woman with spite. "Little rogue, you lie all day long, trying to get rid of me!"

Embarrassed at witnessing this unexpected argument, we wait, looking at our shoes. Finally, the grandmother yields and leaves, defending herself of being crazy. Her daughter-in-law wearily sighs at us:

"This old hag exhausts me. Eighty years old and still plenty of oil in her lamp."

"Is there an Ada Wilson who lives with you?" asks Wiggins, in a hurry to get it over with.

"She's one of my nieces, the poor thing. She lives not far from here, at 3, Maidman Street."

2 E

Buck's Row is a sordid street that runs along the East London Railway line train track. It's bordered on one side by little two storey houses with rotting fronts. The walls are kept away from the eight yard wide street by a pavement barely 3 feet wide.

On the other side, the walls of the Schneider's Cap factory must, at night, plunge the street into a darkness much more sinister than its ambiance in daytime could ever suggest. We look for the place where the body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered. In the deserted alley, near a school, we notice traces of dried blood at the foot of the door of a horse butcher's warehouse. A large round dark mark is found on the ground, near the left side of the door. Wiggins attempts to push on the door, without success.

We canvas the area and first meet Emma Green, a widow who lives with her daughter and her two grandsons in the little house next to the stables in front of which the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found.

"My room and my daughter's overlook the pavement where the poor woman was found," the old woman explains to us.

"I didn't hear anything until the arrival of the police, yet I'm a very light sleeper."

Across the street, we meet Walter Purkiss, the director of the Essex loading dock who lives close to here with his wife and his son.

"Our room is on the second floor of the fishmonger's and overlooks the street. I went to bed around 11 and woke up many times during the night, between 1 and 3. My wife also slept very badly, yet the night was particularly calm. She was even pacing the room around 3:30 as she told the policemen. Neither one of us heard anything, other than the noise of the trains."

3 E

Wary, Ada Wilson, a sickly woman with chestnut hair that looks like oakum, takes quite some time before opening her door to us. Once reassured as to our intentions, she allows us to enter her semi-underground kitchen, cut off from natural light and ventilation. We question her about the assault she was victim to on March 28th of this year.

"I went to open the door as someone was knocking," she tells us in a trembling voice. "It was a man I didn't know, with a tanned face, and a light brown moustache. He was wearing a black coat, a light pair of trousers, and a worn hat. He forced his way into my room and demanded my money. I refused, so he called me a damned ape and pulled out a knife. I shouted, so then he stabbed me twice in the throat. I collapsed and he fled, leaving me for dead. Neighbours came out but he managed to flee in the street. I was admitted to the hospital and miraculously survived, but my attacker was never arrested and I haven't been able to sleep since. Here, this is a drawing I've kept, it was published in the Police News a few days after my assault, based on my testimony.

[Image of a drawing of a man with a knife]

Ada is obviously affected by looking at the drawing of her assailant with us and retreats into a silence, and we are unable coax any more from her.

5 E

Robert Paul lives in a modest apartment on Forset Street with his pregnant wife and his four children.

"I was on the way to work when I saw another carter in Buck's row, and we discovered the body. I wanted to move it, but the other man thought we had better not. So then I put her clothes back, we couldn't leave the poor woman like that!" That's when I touched her and thought I felt her breathe. We left to look for a policeman. We met officer Mizen before going on our way. Work was waiting for us. I went back to see the police the next day to make a statement."

10 E

"This isn't your lucky day," his secretary explains to us, "Mister Baxter just left for the morgue, furious that two residents have removed the victim's clothes before the arrival of the medical examiner and his expertise. Knowing Mister Baxter, and how pernicketty he is, I wouldn't want to be in those two's shoes!"

"And Inspector Abberline?" asks Wiggins.

"I can't tell you, I know that he usually floats between Commercial Street and here. He's a difficult man to catch right now!"

17 E

The Frying Pan is a sordid pub with a washed out sign on the corner of Finch Street and Brick Lane. On the doorstep, prostitutes try to find clients among the passersby. A badly shaven doorman, pipe in mouth and billy club up his sleeve, gauges us as we enter. We find a space, not too far from a dirt encrusted man, bald on the top of his head, occupied by looking above him at the gleam of the gaslamp lighting up the smoke-filled room, all the while stuffing a clay pipe with his thumb, using coarsely chopped tobacco. His clothes seem too large, and his frayed cuffs are as black as his fingernails.

Upon our arrival, he begins to complain.

"Friends!" Cohorts!" Greetings!" It's because of that damned gas that I'm losing my mane!" And they have the balls to call this a Gin Palace!"

The barkeep, without paying the least attention to our neighbour, pours us a glass of his best rye whiskey, and Wiggins takes the chance to interrogate him. He learns that Polly was here on the night of the crime, and that she left the pub around one in the morning, alone and 'imbibed,' after having contributed greatly to making the place more lively. As we are about to walk out of the pub, a large mature woman with a florid complexion grabs Wiggins by the arm. With her scratchy voice, burned by alcohol, she whispers:

"You're investigating Polly's murder, young man?"

"Yes, Miss... ?" answers Wiggins.

"Call me Pearly Poll.I think she was killed by a man who has a grudge against the prostitutes of Whitechapel.I was a friend of Martha Tabram, you know, the one who was murdered at 67 George Yard Building. And earlier, other girls have been assaulted in the neighbourhood. It's the Nichols' gang turf here, but we haven't seen them much since August. They were there then to wring money from us. But as soon as there's danger, we don't feel too protected anymore."

"These other girls, could we meet them?"

"I knew one, she was called Belinda Wishart, I haven't seen her in the pub for a while but I think she still lives in the neighbourhood... where exactly? That I wouldn't be able to tell you.

"Thanks for your help... Pearly."

We leave the tavern.

Outside, a thick soot-laden fog has swept over the streets...

18 E

Between Commercial Street and Brick Lane, we enter narrow streets in search of the Thrawl Street lodging house. In placed, blood coming from nearby slaughterhouses, flows freely over the ground. An errant dog is taking advantage of that and is licking the pavement. Stepping into a short alleyway, we are forced to pull out our handkerchiefs to protect ourselves from the pestilential smell of the stench which, coming from a nearby slaughterhouse, wafts over to us. The neighbourhood in itself is formed by a mass of houses of three or four storeys which seem to have been built with no plans, each inhabited from the basement to the attic, forming gaps so narrow that one could cross the alley by going from one window to the next. Luke, the "locksmith" of our small band, who spent his childhood here, explains to us that in this thieves' den of a neighbourhood, doors are useless as there's nothing to steal. It's in the middle of this daedalus that we find the Thrawl Street doss house. We enter into a vast kitchen, smokey from the chimney detached from the brick wall. The beams and the ceiling have been darkened by soot. A bare bones iron gas pipe feeds a lone lamp in the middle of the table. It's the only source of light, other than the fireplace around which wet clothes are set. Pensioners, surrounded by children of all ages, kneeling by the fire, are grilling herrings which put out a strong smell, while others are drying cigar stumps.

On the whitewashed walls are written in large characters a few precepts which preach resignation:

THE EARTH IS A VALE OF TEARS.

BLESSED BE THOSE WHO LEAVE IT.

DO NOT LOOK ABOVE YOURSELF, BUT BENEATH YOU, AND, MISERABLE THOUGH YOU MAY BE, YOU WILL FIND MORE MISERABLE STILL.

The manager, an imposing man in his sixties, is settled on a stool not far from the chimney. He's badly shaven, bloated by alcohol, and wears an old hunting jacket which is worn and torn to the skin.

"Today, I have a lead cap with a cast iron visor," he complains, while gazing at his cooking meal and clearly regretting the amount he imbibed the night before. "Polly lived here for a bit with her friend, Nelly the Telegraph. We call her that as she's the first one to spread rumours. Polly stayed here for three weeks. Polly was an unfortunate, but she kept her smile and her good mood, but to pay for her bed though, that was another matter! How many times did I have to credit her a meal or a bed? That Polly, she could never hold down a job, so she'd end up prostituting. But lately she didn't pay anymore, so when she came back from the Frying Pan half drunk and without a penny on the night of the thirtieth, I refused to give her a bed. She left at around one forty, promising to come back and pay, and asking me to keep her bed for her... she was all happy and wouldn't stop boasting about having a funny new bonnet. That's the last thing she's told me. D'you know who's the bastard that ended her?"

"No, we're leading our own investigation. This Nelly, you know where we could find her?"

"The poor woman is snoring in her flea-box as we speak!

She's alone and has much trouble paying her dues. If you could give her a hand, you'd be kind."

"Yeah, let's go up and see her."

"Give me what the Telegraph owes me directly, it'll keep her from spending it down her gullet at the pub!"

We give a few extra pence to the manager, asking ourselves if he would actually deduct it from Nelly's tab. He ends up standing up, arming himself with a lantern, and guides us to the first floor. We discover a filthy dorm room in which are stacked, in bunks similar to coffins, poor women. The manager wakes up a woman in her fifties, with a worn face and sunken eyes, without care, much like the rest of the room.

With a tired tread, Nelly joins us in the stairway. The manager goes back down and leaves us in darkness.

We apologise from having her woken up and explain to her the reason for our visit.

"You should have warned me of your coming, I would have cleaned up my face like I did yesterday for Inspector Abberline," answers Nelly the Telegraph, smiling despite her fatigued state.

"Can you tell us about Polly?" asks Wiggins.

"Oh... yes of course..." answers Nelly in a halftone, obviously moved. "Polly would often ask me to reserve a mat for her here. I liked her despite her character. She found herself alone, with no man I mean, as much because of her moods as due to the drink... Yet she had had five kids, but it had been years since she had even seen one of them... so you know, alcohol, no one really had a reason to throw stones at her... and we felt a bit safer with the Nichols gang in the area, a bit more than with the bobbies." Nelly suddenly stops, pensive.

"When did you see her for the last time?" asks Wiggins, bringing Nelly the Telegraph back to reality.

"It was right before... Oh my God, when I think about it....

I met her by luck around two-thirty in the morning, at the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road, across from the church. It was raining cats and dogs. I was coming back from the docks where I had been watching the fire at the Shadwell warehouses; the rain wasn't enough to quench the blaze. The sky was red and there was lightning...

Polly was drunk; she was staggering along a wall. I went to see her and she explained to me that she had earned three times the amount needed to pay for her bed that night... but that she spent everything at the pub. She didn't want to go to a 'Penny sit-ups'. So I begged her to come back with me, but she still wanted to earn the four pennies to pay the sleep merchant. 'I'll be back soon' she told me. The church's clock then began to toll... I saw her stagger towards Whitechapel Road, then she disappeared in the darkness... if only she had listened to me..."

"Did you know her former husband?"

"No, I never saw him, but Polly had told me about him. He was called William and had stopped paying her a pension long ago, when he learned that she was prostituting herself. The last time she saw her ex-husband was two years ago in June, at the burial of her brother who died burned alive because of the explosion of a paraffin lamp. I think that William lived with his sister. He had gotten the kids a few years ago when he learned that Polly lived with Thomas."

"Thomas?"

"Thomas Drew, a blacksmith who has his shop between Raven Row and Whitechapel Road. She had gotten a crush on him at the time and their thing lasted a few years but it ended badly."

"She didn't have any new... friends?"

"Not as far as I know."

As we're about to go down the stairs, Wiggins turns back and speaks one last time to Nelly: "I almost forgot, we paid your tab to the manager."

24 E

We enter the Old Montague Street morgue by a large wooden double door, which is cracked open, stepping over a large, dubious and malodorous puddle. The entrance is vast, cold, sparsely furnished, and burdened by nauseating scents, a mixture of the odours of corpses and chemicals. Only three tables occupy the hall's central space, and a few buckets, bowls, and other copper containers are scattered here and there, next to piles of clothes and rags, left on the ground.

On one of the tables is a wooden case. We approach in silence, conscious as to what the box must contain.

Within is the body of a woman in her forties, partially covered by a grey drape stained with brown spots. Her head, with hair slicked down by blood, is tilted back, her eyes closed for eternity.

A gaping gash holds her throat open.

We gaze upon the livid corpse in Whitechapel's glacial morgue without any of us daring to lift the drape when Wiggins turns around, alerted by the sounds of footsteps in the yard; a short time later, a small man comes in dressed with worn out and patched clothes, with a beard that goes to his eyes. He stops, surprised to find us here.

Evidently unsure as to the attitude he should adopt, he glares at us while frowning his bushy eyebrows.

Taking advantage of this brief moment of hesitation, Wiggins speaks to the guard using a likeable tone:

"Greetings sir, allow me to introduce myself, I'm detective Wiggins and here are my assistants. We're leading an investigation in collaboration with the Metropolitan Police, and we'd like to ask you a few questions. Do you work here?"

"Uhm... yeah, I'm Robert Mann, one of the managers of this morgue," answers the man in a hesitant tone.

"Were you the one present when the body of Mary Ann Nichols was brought in?" Wiggins then gestures at the box behind him.

"Yeah, I got to the yard at five, I live here... But there wasn't anyone left, no doctor, no police inspector. Just the ambulance in the yard and the stiff left on a table in the cold bodies' room."

"What happened next?"

"I closed the door, locked it, then went to have breakfast. Then James and I... James Hatfield, he's a colleague from the morgue who must have arrived around six... We went back to the cold bodies' room and we undressed the stiff... sorry the body, then we washed it and perfumed it with a mix of water and phenolic acid. All that before the doctor came in, to make him save time and keep him from nasty stenches."

"Where are her clothes?"

"I don't see why you wouldn't be able to ..."

We come closer and discover a thick chestnut overcoat with large copper buttons on which a man and a horse are carved, a dress of brown linen, two grey wool skirts onto which have been stencilled the name of Lambeth hospice which are covered in dried blood, two whalebone corsets, flannel underwear hardened by abundant layers of dried blood, black woollen socks with large ribs, men's boots cut at the top, at the tip, and on the heel, and a black straw bonnet bordered with black velvet. We notice that the clothes are cut in many places.

"The clothes are all cut and torn?" asks Wiggins, perplexed.

"Yeah, we're the ones who did that to undress her, it's faster; she was wearing one hell of a layer of tattered rags and most of it was hardened by dried blood, everywhere on her back, from head to toe. It was a real pain to remove, and she was resisting, too, the old biddy; we could almost believe that she didn't want to be stripped. She was already stiff as a statue."

"Her pockets were empty?" asks Wiggins while searching the overcoat.

"There was a white handkerchief, a comb, and a broken mirror. What a mess! I'm not used to this sort of business, in general I take pensioners who have turned in their keys, and drowned bodies found in the Thames, before they leave for the pine field..."

29 E

29 Brick Lane just happens to be next door to one of Whitechapel's numerous sugar refineries.

Maisie Hackel lives with John Hickinbotham, a robust and gruff butcher from Whitechapel High Street, who lets us in grudgingly after Wiggins explains to him the object of our visit.

Wiggins explains to Maisie Hackel that we'd like to hear her testimony about the attack that she was the victim of last year.

"Oh, that wasn't really important, an altercation that turned sour," she tells us as she puts on her coat. "At the time I was with Nancy and she had the habit of jeering at the passersby when she'd had too much to drink. We met a sailor who didn't take it well and started getting rough with us. Thankfully other people in the crowd intervened and called a bobby who immediately arrested the man. There you go gentlemen, there's not much else to say, and if you'll excuse me I need to go, I have an appointment at the Angel & Crown and I'm already late."

"What's that all about?" enquires her companion as he grabs her by the arm.

"I forgot to tell you but Alice asked me to meet her in the early afternoon, she wants me to help her work."

"Selling matches in the street? You shouldn't be hanging around with that wretch. In any case, I forbid you from wetting your whistle!"

"Don't worry, you big lug, I'll be sober and come running home."

As Maisie Hackel leaves through the door she gives us a suggestive wink. We end up in company of John Hickinbotham, as embarrassed as he is; we don't stick around.

(This lead is free. Don't count it.)

33 E

Kitty Winter is a bony woman with a fleeting gaze. At the dawn of her forties she seems much older. Taking us for policeman, she greets us with a flurry of insults. Thanks to Wiggins' power of persuasion and two of his shillings, she ends up agreeing to let us into her furnished apartment, and with a certain emotion that she tells us about her former association with the man, Freddy Broken Fingers.

"He had convinced me to work with him to steal the clothes from the ragamuffins who were wandering in the streets of the Saint Paul Church neighbourhood. He then wanted me to sell them back at the Petticoat Lane market. I thought it was appalling, but as the saying goes: 'a hungry stomach has no ears.' At the time, I had been reduced to begging. On a job, I got caught by a sarge and he scampered off. He was a sandwich-man for a while, then started again with his cons, suckering fools. While I was out in the slammer, he became a pimp. When I got out, he tried to convince me to work the streets for him, he got a slap for an answer. The last time I saw him was in early September, he told me he was in deep trouble and had to leave the country in a hurry. He told me goodbye and left by train to Southampton. Here's the only thing he left me."

Kitty Winter points at a tailor's mannequin in the corner of the room. It's dressed with worn clothes with many pockets on which are sewn a multitude of bells. She then grabs a bottle of gin with the impatience of a mother finding her lost child, pours herself a glass which she tosses down her throat just as quickly.

"He'd use it to train his company of kids in the arts of pickpocketing," continues Kitty Winter with an empty gaze. "Professor they'd call him, all these little scamps.""

"You don't know where he went?"

"When we were together he often talked about Australia, he had a friend there who could put us up he'd tell me. Maybe he managed to get on board a ship to Adelaide."

34 E

The infirmary's director, Thomas Babcock, clearly remembers Annie Millwood:

"A brave woman, she remained here for a month, time needed to heal from her wounds, and she never complained. She was always daydreaming and and often lay for hours in bed, waiting, while doing nothing. She had no work, no family, and no husband anymore: he was a soldier who died on the battlefield, I believe. She was forced to prostitute herself to keep her home."

"Do you know where we could reach her?"

"You won't be able to: she died. Once healed, we sent her to the South Grove asylum, and ten days later, at the end of March, she collapsed in the back yard as she was hanging laundry to dry: a rupture of a pericardial artery."

"Did she tell you about her aggressor?"

"Yes, she didn't know him and mistook him for a client I think; he had hit her with a right cross that nearly knocked her out, before stabbing her along her legs and lower abdomen, for no reason."

"Thank you, Mister Babcock."

46 E

We go to Corbett's Court looking for the man named Robert, and we're told that there is a carter with that name working here: Robert Paul, but that he took a few days off to rest.

60 E

We find the White House night asylum in Flower and Dean Street, a sordid street filled with a fog that had suddenly fallen on the neighbourhood.

Leaning against a wall which surrounds a hole being used as an open receptacle for all of the trash of the asylum's inhabitants, a man with a misaligned face and sunken cheeks calls after us with a hoarse voice:

"Hey friends, what brings you to Spitalfields' Evil Quarter Mile? Isn't it time to turn in for the night?"

Without answering, we follow Wiggins inside, and are bumped into by a man of great corpulence, with a gangrenous face putting out a smell of sweat to the point of causing nausea.

Swaying on his drunkard's legs, he's busy buttoning up his trousers. He clamours for our attention, letting us smell his fetid breath as we walk by:

"Hey, careful where you put your feet ya chumps!" I hope you ain't here for grub because there ain't much other than a bowl of skilly. I'm out of here, I know a place where the eating's better!"

We make our way to the first floor, where we interrogate the landlord of the night asylum, a little loquacious man with a crooked face and with arms covered in tattoos, who is busy inspecting the bottom of an iron cauldron hanging on its hook near a small chimney.

"Polly was here last week to get a bed," he explains to us. "She'd sleep here but didn't bring her clients back, as that's forbidden."

"Have you noticed if she was seeing any man in particular recently?" asks Wiggins.

"No," the landlord answers laconically.

62 E

Roger Boosey is a slim and short-legged man who is drowning in a worn redingote. Landlord of a small furnished apartment on George Street, he leans on the half-door of his hutch while he relates to us the abominable trial concerning his former tenant, Emma Smith.

"After having been beaten and raped by these four monsters, she managed to come back here. She was wet with blood from her lower abdomen and had used her shawl that she had placed between her legs to sponge up the blood that was flowing. I was stunned that she had possessed the strength to come back here. Another tenant helped me get her to the hospital against her will."

"Did she tell you what happened to her?"

"Yes, four men followed her from the Whitechapel Church and blocked her off at the corner of Brick Lane and of Wentworth Street. Then they beat her, raped her, and then introduced a pilly club into... Mister Boosey, embarrassed, pauses a moment before resuming. She barely had time to get to the hospital before she fainted, the poor girl, and then her light was snuffed four days later."

"She didn't know her attackers?"

"I don't think so, in any case she didn't tell me so. She just told me that the bastards were young and were four in number."

"Thank you, Mister Boosey."

67 E

At the corner of Wentworth Street and George Yard, we enter the George Yard Buildings, an ancient textile factory converted into a dormitory building for workers. We go under the arch and cross the yard under the gaze of starving, filth-covered teenagers. We climb up an imposing stone stairway, dark, framed on either side by metal ramps, and look for inhabitants who may have been present when Martha Tabram was killed.

On the second floor, Mister Saunders Reeves, surrounded by his wife and seven children, agrees to answer us. He is clearly a dock worker with a face marked from long years spent working hard to earn his pittance.

"Yes, we were there, we were even questioned by the police about the girl with knife holes in her. We saw nothing, heard nothing. I left for work around five. While coming down the stairs I then noticed on the landing of the first floor a still form. As the sun was rising I saw as I came closer that it was a woman lying on her back in a puddle of blood. I left running to go fetch the police."

The conversation continues for a bit. Mister Saunders even brings us to the landing in question, the first floor one. Despite our careful search, we find no clue, other than a few traces of brown dried blood in the wood's grain.

"Do you know which doctor declared her death?"

"Yes, someone from the neighbourhood, Doctor Killeen." Other inhabitants of the building, a certain Elizabeth Mahony and her husband, tell us that they came home around two that morning, after having celebrated their holiday. She even went back out to buy dinner in a shop on Thrawl Street.

They didn't notice anything while going by on the stairs. However, they let us know that a neighbour, Alfred George Crow, a cab driver, while coming home from work around 3:30, noticed in the darkness, a form lying on the landing of the first floor. As it's common for people to sleep there, he continued on his way and went home to bed.

81 E

We walk along Whitechapel High Street looking for Belinda Wishart. We ask for information from a butcher who is emptying a bag containing shreds of meat and bones into a box we naively believe to be a dustbin.

"These are the leftovers for the 'ladies'!" Belinda? She lives in that passage over there, on your right, right past the Saggers' Brothers grocery."

We enter a dark passage which is so narrow that we have to walk single file. We find the residence of Belinda Wishart, a confined room barely larger than a corridor, on the first floor of an old building. Placed on a stool, her baby sleeps in a large egg crate.

Belinda Wishart is talkative, she tells us about her sorry life; her mother dying in childbirth, her alcoholic father dying of cirrhosis when she was fourteen years old, that barkeep who exploited her, her dreams of performing on stage in New York, and the many disappointments in her love life... and then prostitution to survive.

"Tell us about your assault?" asks Wiggins who wants to get to the point.

"He was a Portuguese sailor who reeked strongly enough of alcohol to kill flies as they flew by. He had a black beard, tattoos, and sweated from everywhere like a toad. He wanted to fuck on the way. We went to St. Mary Street, near the school. It was late, and it was deserted. I hiked up my dress and my petticoats, I leaned back against the wall of the school and asked him to hurry, as I wasn't warm. He pulled down his pants and realised he'd amount to nothing. It made me laugh: he looked funny holding his little bit in his left hand. He flew into a rage, pulled out a knife while screaming at me in Portuguese then leapt at me. I screamed, fought back, and we both ended up on the pavement. When we heard whistles, he let me go and tried to run, but the copper got him. If it hadn't been for that, he would've had my skin, the bastard!"

"Do you remember the name of the constable?"

"No."

"Could you describe your aggressor more precisely and give us his name?"

"It's been a while and it was dark... He was as ugly as sin, with a flat nose, black greasy hair, and a hedgehog for a beard. Until he turned violent, he was rather jovial. Short and squat, I'd say he was roughly in his forties. He had a thick accent. I think he was called Manuel... Say, you wouldn't go to the dairy for me, I've got two kids to drag around and I owe her five days?"

"Something new in the case. This should interest Abberline." concludes Wiggins with a satisfied smile.

82 E

The Angel & Crown is an old animated tavern, with large banisters from which the clients located on the upper floor, all equipped with pewter mugs, can observe those remaining downstairs, while talking and laughing loudly. We're looking for Maisie Hackel, but she's the one who finds us.

"Over here, we'll be left alone," she whispers as she pulls Wiggins by the arm in direction of a dark corner under the banister.

"I'm sorry," murmurs Wiggins. "I should have used more tact, I hope we didn't put you in an embarrassing situation?"

"No, it's okay, it could have been worse. John, my companion, knows nothing about my old life, and I'd rather it remain that way... I'd like to leave all that behind me..."

Wiggins explains to her the reason for our visit and Maisie Hackel tells us her story:

"At the time, I was earning my keep and paying my rent by prostituting myself, as I was all alone. Then I met John, and tried to change my path, but at first I had trouble finding money each night to pay for a bed until I found a job at the match factory. When I settled down with John, I realised that I had gotten pregnant. I wasn't even sure he was the father, so I wanted to abort. I knew a girl, Emma she was called, who had had hers removed. She was older and said at the time that it wasn't very proper to be pregnant at her age. I asked her for the address of the midwife she'd seen. She gave it to me and even told me that thanks to her boyfriend, she could get me a deal. I think that Emma and her man would get money when they brought her a patient, and that the midwife didn't really get a say in it if she didn't want to get reported to the police. I went to see her, and, coming out, three young men stopped me wanting to know where Freddy Broken Fingers and Emma were. I told them that I had no clue, so their leader threw me to the ground and told me that if I didn't talk then he'd be the one aborting me. He told me that he didn't like little songbirds like me, and that Freddy and Emma would pay for what they were doing. Then, encouraged by his friends, he hit me then pulled out a billy club while telling me I'd better tell them where he was held up. Thankfully, people alerted by the noise, got them to scamper. His friends managed to flee, but he was held by passersby long enough for a policeman to arrive. After that, I went to the hospital, where I had a stillborn."

"That midwife, could you give us her name and tell us where she lives?"

Maisie Hackel stares at us nervously then decides to answer us:

"She's French... she's called Martine Le Jonc and lived in Hunt Street, but she went back to France."

83 E

Doctor Killeen looks for his report of the event.

"Martha Tabram, prostitute, 39 years old, living on George Street: Called shortly before 5. The victim was lying in a puddle of blood and had been stabbed 39 times with a knife. The time of death is estimated to be roughly 3 in the morning. The wounds inflicted included five blows to the left lung, two to the right lung, one to the heart, six to the stomach, five to the liver, and two to the spleen. The assassin, who was right-handed, had mainly aimed for the belly, the breasts, and the genital area. No less than thirty eight blows were from a normal penknife, the sole exception was a wound to the sternum caused by a bayonet."

102 E

The construction site of the Whitechapel train station is crawling with workers by day, but it is deserted by nightfall. We find no one to tell us about the murder on Buck's Row.

(This lead is free. Don't count it.)

115 E

Doctor Llewellyn lets us into his room but doesn't seem all that disposed to grant us much of his time. He's a stern man in the prime of his years, wearing a short beard. The walls of the waiting room in which he receives us are plastered with frames containing his degrees and honorary titles:

A diploma of higher medical studies from the London Hospital, a division doctor's title from Her Majesty's armies, a manuscript page making him a member of the British Gynaecological Society...

"I've already made many statements to the press and to the police, and my report was sent to Saint Bartholomew's Hospital," the doctor explains to us in a tired voice. "If you want to read it, you will need to go there."

"We won't bother you for long Doctor," answers Wiggins. We'd just like to know if you had noticed anything peculiar, and if you could clarify two or three things, such as the approximate time of Mary Ann Nichols' death, the cause of death, and if you could tell us if she had been killed elsewhere and dropped off in Buck's Row later.

"Listen, I got there around four o'clock, we're only three hundred yards from Buck's Row, and Mary Ann Nichols was dead. Her wrists were cold, but her body was still warm. She had been dead for at least half an hour and it's of course out of the question that the wound could have been self inflicted. There was very little blood around the neck and on the ground, blood which must have flowed into her hair and clothes. As to the cause of death, the wounds to her abdomen as well as those to the throat are sufficient to cause death, we'd just need to determine in which order they were made. I think that the victim first had her throat slashed, then was gutted once lying down. I ordered that the body be transported to the Whitechapel Morgue rather than morgue of Whitechapel Hospice. A short time later I joined them to perform the autopsy. The rest is in my report."

123 E

We wake officer John Neil as he is recovering from a long night shift.

"Sorry Mister Neil", apologises Wiggins, "but we'll only take a few minutes." We follow officer Neil into his modest apartment. He sits down, smooths his moustache and tries to put some order to his messy hair.

"What would you like to know, gentlemen?"

"Just a few details; could you describe the state the body was in when you found it?"

"That poor woman was lying on her back, alongside a wooden door, with her left side against it, and her throat slit. As I didn't see much blood, I took a bit of time to realise she was dead, I even tried to pull her back up."

"How was it that you didn't see more blood?" Wiggins asks, surprised.

"I first thought that she had been killed elsewhere and dropped off there, so I looked for wheel marks with the light of my lantern, but I found none. Then colleagues arrived, then Doctor Llewellyn who lives not too far off on Whitechapel Road. The doctor quickly examined the body then had it transported to the morgue in an hand-pulled cart.It's when we lifted the corpse to put it in the wooden shell that we realised there was a mass of coagulated blood at head height and that the victim's clothes were largely soaked in it."

"You didn't see anyone as you arrived?"

"I was making my round from Baker's Row to Brady Street, and no, I didn't see anyone."

126 E

"Listen, I don't know who at the Yard is sending you, but I'd like not having to endlessly repeat the same things." With a sigh, Jonas Mizzen unwillingly remembers the night of the murder. "I was patrolling on Hanbury when, at the crossing with Old Montague, two carters stopped me. One of them told me my services were required at Buck's Row and after receiving a bit more information, I left in that direction. I found another officer there, Neil, with locals. I helped as much as I could at the moment, I went to fetch the medical examiner, and once the body was transported, I returned home."

134 E

Thomas Drew is a blacksmith in the prime of life, with a face framed in a red beard.

He loosens his jaw only to give us his point of view, with a monotone voice.

"After she left William, I spent four years sharing the same plate as Polly, and that was three too many. She wasn't a bad girl, but she drank too much. The day she filched some of my goods to be able to afford more drink, I cut ties with her. It's been a year since I've seen her. I've seen her from afar, by happenstance. I've got nothing more to say, other than if I get my hands on the son of a sow who ended her, I'll break his neck," he concludes, slamming his left fist on the table.

The Times

LONDON, Saturday, September 1st, 1888 #195 Price: 3d.

BIRTHS

On August 30th, at Clyde House, Clyde Road, Dublin, the wife of C.B.H. Jenkins, head of C squadron of the 19th Hussars Regiment of the Princess of Wales, gave birth to a girl.

On August 29th, the wife of EDWARD ARNOTT CLOWES gave birth to twin girls, both stillborn.

MARRIAGES

We learned of the marriage of HENRI WEST, eldest son of Philip West, and of MINNIE, younger daughter of Louis Lewiston, 17 Midway Grove, N, from the Honorable Jay Winterthurn. The marriage was celebrated among the parents of the young lady.

The wedding of Mr EDWARD QUIMBY, and of MYRTLE MORTIMER, daughter of SIR HORACE MORTIMER, director of the Mortimer Company, was celebrated in the Saint-Paul Cathedral of London, this last August 26th.

DEATHS

We have been asked to announce the death, on August 26th in Menton (France), of EDWARD LOUIS-HACK, residing in Brighton and Paris, civil engineer, which took place in his fifty-eighth year.

We have learned of the death, on August 27th in Moorstop, of JESSIE ELIZABETH, beloved daughter of WILLIAM GEORGE and of FANNY WOOD, in her twentieth year.

We have just learned of the death, on August 29th in Rochester, of Dr Jardine. He was the oldest doctor in Rochester and died, at the age of eighty-nine, 2 of a morphine overdose.

EMPLOYMENT

Stable hand with good references, would like to be employed in the London area. Good experience with HORSES and the daily care they require. George Hutchinson, Victoria Home, 94 Commercial Street, E.C.

Looking for a good cook, single or widowed, between 30 and 35 years of age, with references only. Write to G. H., at the Times.

APARTMENTS FOR RENT

Rooms (furnished), bedsit with living room in corner, gas, and piano; very affordable rent. 2 Wilmington Square, Clerkenwell.

Noel Park — The model neighbourhood of the northern London suburb, very easily accessible via tramway. Wide streets, paved alleys, good water evacuations, and robust houses, well ventilated, and quite pretty, near the Alexandra Palace and a few minutes’ walk to Bury-Park, Muswell Hill, Highgate Woods, and a cricket field. Roughly 1000 houses, of which 250 can already be inhabited.

MAPPIN & WEBB'S — FINE SILVER & QUALITY TABLE ACCESSORIES. Illustrated catalog sent via mail for free. Safe shipping of our products by mail.

News from Abroad

Eastern Africa

The Ministry of War has received the following brief from Rome yesterday from the commander in Massawa: "A price belonging to a French mission arrived from Abruz and reported that four of the five Italian officers have been killed, but he doesn't know the fate of the last one. He added that Debot has 700 men, of which 350 are armed with muskets. They have very little munitions remaining. A great number of the men who had been dispersed have now returned with Adam Ago. 400 in all have come back. I've sent men on location to get more information."

Egypt

Last year, in January, a villager looking for sebak (a fertilizing dry earth) discovered a hundred clay tablets covered with cuneiform writing on the Tell el-Amarna site. Professor Flinders Petrie, who was overseeing an independent dig in the area since he left the Foundation for the Exploration of Egypt in 1886, personally went on location, accompanied by the young and brilliant Egyptologist Sir Aubrey Penhew. The latter maintains good relations with the Foundation's president, Amelia Blandford Edwards, and hopes to convince Professor Flinders Petrie to work again with those he had described as "uncompeted horoscopes." In any case, Professor Flinders Petrie has claimed that these tablets were written in Akkadian, the language of diplomacy in the age of the pharaohs. More specifically, it comprises of correspondence between the chancellery at the end of the rule of Amenophis III and the beginning of that of his son, Akhenaten. These contain, among other things, a series of calls for help sent out by Egyptian vassals in Syria and Palestine, threatened by Hittite ambitions, and letters sent to "the great king, their brother" by the kings of Babylon.

For his part, the eminent Professor Ebenezer Turnbull from London University has started his search in the Valley of Kings, near Karnak and Luxor, in order to explore the tomb of Katebet.

Germany

The population of Hamburg was condemned to learn that due to a mistake of inattention, thirteen crocodiles had escaped from the bridge of a steamship returning from Africa, from where they were taken in order to be sold to various zoos on the continent. These gigantic reptiles, relates the Standard news correspondent, are now in the Elbe.

Belgium

A duel with pistols, which ended tragically, took place last night, at five o'clock, on the border of Holland between the Representative for Belgian Independence in Liege, Mr. Thuillier, and his nephew, Mr Lejeune, lawyer from Liege and acting Justice of the Peace in a neighbouring canton.

Mr Thuillier was struck in the heart with a bullet and died on the spot. The reasons behind the encounter are of a private matter. Mr Thuillier, who had been the editor of a private matter. Mr Thuillier, who was living off his pension, was aged sixty and had been married for barely a year.

Canada

It is said that the Parliament of the Dominion will be convened in an extraordinary session in the situation created by the message received from the President of the United States. At this very moment in Canada, a petition is being signed demanding that, if Mr Cleveland should over put his threats into action, the British market should be closed to American cereals, as Russia and the colonies could fill the needs of the United Kingdom.

Edison's Phonograph

The phonograph, which has nothing to do with the telephone, or the telegraph, is an incredible instrument which can keep and reproduce, thanks to an acoustic disc, the tones, the accents, and the syllables expressed by the human voice. We can in this way record and listen to a speech in its original pronunciation as well as any music piece. The disc is easily portable and another listener equipped with a phonograph can thus re-listen to it in their own house. Professor Edison, from Orange in New Jersey, in the United States of America, famous for his work on electrical lights as well as for many other inventions of great value, is the inventor of the phonograph, a smaller version of the one he exhibited in London ten years ago and which caused wonderment among the audience.

He has, in the past twelve months, greatly improved his invention, which was tested by experimenters here, on August 25th, in the house of Colonel G.E. Gouraud, the agent of Mr Edison's inventions in London, as well as the Press Gallery at the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace. During the first ten, the voice of Mr. Edison, ten days after he spoke - in the United States, distant some three thousand miles - the "phonogram" having been brought from New York, via Southampton, on August 16th, with the regular mail coming from the United States, by the steamship Elder of the German Lloyd's.

During the great Handel concert, the phonograph, placed atop the bust of the composer at the north transept of the Crystal Palace, recorded with perfect precision the sublime accords of the songs and the instruments, from Israel in Egypt, thanks to a long cone. The machine was handled by Mr De Corcy Hamilton, one of Mr Edison's assistants, who had brought it from America.

The "phonogram," then, sent to Mr. Edison, will be able to in this way retribute all of the choirs, hundreds of voices, and accompanied by the orchestra, the great organ, in New York and in other American cities, in front of hundreds of different audiences for years to come.

Spy Arrested

A German man, aged sixty, named Louis Henk was arrested in Woolwich. In addition to an odious crime he will be speaking of later, he is accused of spying. After having lived in France, America, and Belgium, he had, three years ago, come to settle down in London, where he had opened a tea shop on Waterloo Road. Six months ago, he left the business and came to live in Woolwich under the name of Professor Louis Walter. He had with him three children, aged seventeen, Alice, aged fourteen, and Harry, aged nine.

The so-called Walter didn't have stable work. However, he never lacked for money. He'd spend most of his time lurking around the military establishments in Woolwich and the neighbouring forts, carefully avoiding associating with his neighbours, and threatening, with loaded pistols, anyone daring to threaten him.

And yet, despite the suspicion he was subjected to, he was left alone until his eldest daughter, Emma, made a complaint to the police commissioner stating that her father was abusing her. An investigation was then begun. Realising this, Henk decided to flee after taking various precautions.

He had burned his papers and sent to Ganderwell nine filled with various kinds of secrets that he had the intention of going to pick up later, when, at four in the morning, the Stockwell police commissioner showed up on his doorstep and placed him under arrest. His two youngest children have been put into public care. The packages sent by him to Camberwell have been taken to the Old Bailey, where they have been put at the disposition of Judge Wending, who is in charge of the case.

The Times

POLICING PROBLEMS

Questioned about their chief by our reporters, the police have answered with the exuberance which has made our police force famous. It's "War against Warren", they've answered with ardour. The only advice we'll give the superintendents, inspectors, and constables who are not satisfied with the head commissioner is go and talk to our Minister of Interior, Mr MATTHEWS.

Instead of dubbing to death the Londonians in Trafalgar Square, we could suggest that Sir Charles Warren be sent to Zambezia by Lord SALISBURY to shoot at arabs. There is no doubt that under the orders of Sir Charles there would be many shootings; but the idea that our head commissioner will have more success with the savages than with the socialists is one of the enjoyable illusions which would quickly be dispelled by a superficial study of the files of the Colonial Office. Sir Charles was in Africa what he is in England, a clumsy despot, turning everyone against him.

We have much consideration for the people of Zambia to war as a Puritan Chauvinist train them in matters of the Bible and bullets. His party and himself have already done enough damage.

HORROR IN WHITECHAPEL

A woman was found yesterday in Buck's Row completely eviscerated. Investigators from Scotland Yard have managed to establish, not without difficulty, that it was Mary Ann Nichols, nicknamed Polly, who lived in a shelter, at 18 Throod Street of that same neighborhood. At nine o'clock this morning, the deceased's body was moved to a separate room in the Old Montague Street morgue that had been turned into an improvised operating room, and Dr Ralph Llewellyn performed a post-mortem examination.

This afternoon at the Working Lad's Institute, Whitechapel Road, Mr Wynne E. Baxter will open an investigation into the death of the unfortunate woman in presence of the police authorities, represented by Inspectors Lestrade and Abberline of Scotland Yard. In order for the police not to be slowed down in its investigative work, and so that they have the advantage of having in their possession all of the information gathered under oath, it was decided, in skip over the preliminary formalities of the investigation this time. Any information regarding the case must be brought to the Commercial Street police station in Spitalfields.

A WITNESS FOUND!

Robert Paul, carter, has stated this to our reporter: "I got onto Buck's Row at exactly 3:45. It was dark. I was looking for nothing he said, I mean there was nothing towards me. As the neighbourhood isn't safe, I took a defensive stance. But actually, he just came close and told me: 'Come this way.' Then I saw the woman lying on her back. I took her wrist and her hands were cold. She seemed that it was too dark to see if there was any blood. I thought that an outrage might've happen to her. I was really late, so I left with the idea that I was not going to see her again. Baker's Row, who was getting urgent to move along. I told him what I had seen, that he didn't say if he'd go look or not. In any case, he continued to deal with the vagrants and I thought it was shameful, because I did tell them that the woman was dead!"

THE FIRES ON THE DOCKS

Two terrible fires erupted in the night of last August 30th. The first began in the Gibbs & Co. construction workshop of the Shadwell docks and has entirely destroyed a sailboat before spreading to the coal unloading dock of Gowland, where 800 tons of coal burned until morning.

The second started on the docks to the south-east of Wapping, in the buildings of the East Indies Company, which among other things contained stocks of brandy and gin. They have entirely burnt down.

MORE REDUCTIONS IN THE PRICES FOR RENTING A CAB

Roughly 150 drivers from the London Improved Cab Company have handed in their whips yesterday and have demanded a reduction of the fee for renting their vehicles. Among these men, 100 were from the Midland Railway Station and 50 from Great Northern. Their resignations have caused trouble for their bosses who have agreed to lower the price by 1s., with the drivers now paying 11s., while their colleagues driving four-wheeled cabs get away with paying a half-sovereign.

IMPORTANT SEIZURE OF EXPLOSIVES

An important stockpile of powder was discovered in the basement of a Birmingham Irish pub. The pub's barkeep, Patrick O'Brien, was known to be a nationalist and suspected of terrorist activities. He liked to speak Gaelic in his pub and would preach there for the "rebirth of the Irish people".

According to a journalist of the Star on location, he's even suspected of having planned an attack in London with the goal of freeing Thomas Clark, who was condemned to hard labour for life in 1883. One of Clark's lieutenants, Shawn O'Grady, who is actively wanted and suspected of belonging to the sadly famous Dynamiters, is believed to be behind the aborted project. If that plot is real, it's reminiscent of the terrible attack in London in 1867; in that one, the Fenians had blown up one of the exterior walls of the prison in which one of their own was held, the explosion killed 20 people.

THE CRAZED CARRIAGE, CONT'D AND END

We have related yesterday the story of a carriage launched at triple gallop, containing two women who were shouting for help and who had fled as soon as the guardians of the peace had gotten the carriage to stop.

The investigation made into this mysterious adventure has proven that the two women, upon leaving a night restaurant on Drury Lane, had asked the driver to drive them home, one in Newgate Street, the other in Finsbury Circus, in exchange for a few refreshments. The driver had agreed and had so refreshed himself that he could no longer drive his horse which, had started galloping. The driver helplessly witnessed the departure of his carriage and started running behind it. The outcome was a fine for the driver for drunkenness, insults, and resisting the police officers.

THEFT IN THE CROWN JEWELS ROOM

James Gibson was accused of the theft of a purse containing 18 shillings and 9 pence which belonged to Mrs Emily Fowle, who resided on Fairbank Street, in the St. George neighborhood. Charles, a ten-year-old boy, is the nephew of the complainant. Yesterday afternoon, he went with her to the Tower of London. As they were in the Crown Jewels room, he saw Gibson, standing next to his aunt, put out his hand behind him and hand something off to another man who managed to escape. Gibson has been held temporarily.

EXPLOSION AT THE GUINNESS BREWERY

On saturday, shortly after two, a significant explosion took place at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. Nine men were seriously wounded and the damage is considerable.The explosion took place in the cellar, where the barrels are stored. The machine had leaked out and came into contact with a flame. The explosion was immediate, blowing out all of the building's windows in a deafening roar, inflicting terrible wounds to the men who were attending the machine at the time. Their faces and hands have been burned in a frightening way and the skin of their arms has come apart in shreds. One of the men gave his opinion after the event, and said that the gas flame which triggered the explosion should have never been in that location. He claimed that there were gas flames everywhere in the brewery and that it made the workers take enormous risks. Part of the roof has been blown away, and a large number of windows are broken. The sound of the explosion was heard from a great distance away and the shock of the explosion was felt through the neighborhood. The building of the brewery is not considered dangerous, nonetheless, the brewery is in too poor a shape for normal work to resume.

HENRY IRVING BACK IN LONDON

The eminent tragic actor, Mr Henry Irving, recently returned from Switzerland, is due to play Macbeth this winter at the Lyceum. During his passage through France, he had asked that the translation of Mahomet be kept for him, as he also wants to interpret it in London. It could be possible that the Shakespearean player could come back to Paris to attend the inauguration of the statue to the author of Hamlet.

RESIGNATION OF MR JAMES MONRO

Mr James Monro, chief of the safety police, has tendered his resignation. He is being replaced by Mr Robert Anderson, member of the Irish bar, and attaché at the Ministry of the Interior.

THE "SMALL" ATTACKS

A box of petrol was placed, the evening before last, on the tramway rails of the Charing Cross line in Camden Town, and exploded upon the passage of the car. The travelers felt a shudder and a strong impact, but, happily, no one was injured. Around one in the morning, a petrolard was thrown through a window into the basement of a placement office on Old Bond Street, which, many times in the past, the lemonade-maker boys wanted to close down by force. It exploded with no incident.

THE CASE OF MR VIZETELLI

Mr Vizetelli is the editor who publishes the translations of the best of the Society for the Repression of Vice, are convinced that if French literature didn't exist, there would be in England no prostitution, no adultery, nor any of these shameful and unnamable passions which flourish more than anywhere else on our soil. In Mrs Collette and Collette's opinions, if Mr Zola hadn't written Pot-Bouille, La Terre, and Nana, things would be virtuous, and at night, in the royal parks of London, benches would be occupied by nothing more than celestial creatures.

We'd gladly laugh about the pretension of this Society for Repression of Vice, which has never repressed the least of them, which has never been an obstacle to the trade of children, to the practice of abortions, to the cries of abused prudishness from the lawyer Asquith, as he read the audience a few passages from La Terre, if in the end this case wasn't extremely dire.

Everyone knows what to expect on prudish Albion, and the case made against Mr Zola through his editor will add nothing to his glory. Mr Vizetelli will be found guilty, and it will be a double injustice - our jurists will judge the first meaning of Mr Zola's work requires no further demonstration.

QUESTIONS

FIRST SERIES

1. Why did no one in Buck's Row hear the crime?
2. What was the position of the killer in relation to his victim when the mutilations took place?
3. Was Mary Ann Nichols' killer left or right handed (according to previous answer)?
4. Which assaulted and/or killed women were in all likelihood not victims of Mary Ann Nichol's killer (according to previous answer)?
5. Among the other women, which victim shows the most similar profile?

SECOND SERIES

6. Who had a reason to harm Freddy Broken Fingers?

7. Why?

SOLUTIONS

To our great surprise, Holmes and Watson are present in Abberline's office. Abberline and Watson seem to have performed the usual social niceties in front of a silent Holmes and are thrilled by our arrival.

We therefore relay all of the information collected during the day and Holmes, for once, doesn't interrupt us:

"The Whitechapel murder is singular at more than one level," begins Holmes at the end of our tale. "It's a murder of a nameless level of barbarism: sure, the neighbourhood isn't the safest, but attacking a prostitute and inflicting such mutilations on her really doesn't make any sense for a gang of the area. This attracts too much attention. Thus knowing if Polly's murder is an isolated case or the continuation of a series is critical information for the investigation. In case of a series, the older the murders are and the more they risk involving those close to the murderer. Following the path back to the source of evil is often the best way to discover it."

" Investigating those close to Mary Ann Nichols is therefore useless?" asks Abberline, disappointed.

"Not useless, but investigating the circumstances of her death may prove more useful. The autopsy report is most interesting. Firstly, knowing whether victim was strangled or had her throat slit?"

"Llewelyn believes that her throat was slit," intervenes Wiggins.

"There would have then been many more projections of blood at the crime scene. After the heart stopped, the blood flowed slowly from her throat and into her hair and clothes. It's what we call gravity, Wiggins!" In addition, due to the discreet nature of the murder, strangulation is more credible."

"Or maybe the body was moved?" tries Wiggins.

"Officer Neil, once at the scene explored that hypothesis, and there were no traces of wheels, no drag marks in that blood when the body was found. I know you dream about being an actor, Wiggins, but your imagination sometimes makes you lose sight of the reality of the facts. I'll remind you, evidence is the basis of all investigation, not romantic speculations!"

An embarrassed silence ensues. Watson breaks it: "The murderer thus performed his mutilations post-mortem."

Abberline can't repress a disgusted grimace.

"Yes," answers Holmes, "the body was lying on its back, alongside a wooden door, the head at the left side of the door. Where was the murderer when he performed his mutilations? That's what Llewellyn didn't extrapolate in his report."

"Is that important?" asks Abberline.

"Yes, to know if the murderer is right or left handed. The man almost decapitated his victim and the finger marks on the victim's face gives us the support position of the murderer's hand when he made the incision, from left to right, with his other hand: the violence of that act required him to be completely at ease to perform it. The murderer wasn't directly in front of the body, as it was right up against the door, so he must have been at its side. And in that case, the thumb of your left hand is on the right cheek, while your right hand is holding the knife."

Wiggins motions, trying to visualise the crime scene on Luke.

Be careful not to slice your own wrist, Wiggins, smiles Holmes before continuing: "We are dealing with a right-handed man, no matter what Llewellyn says. Now, back to our victims..."

Our group shouts the names of the older cases: "Ada Wilson?"

"According to the drawing, assaulted by a right-handed man, and even if the motive is not clear at this time, he could be the same man as Polly's killer."

"Annie Millwood?"

"Yes, all evidence points to a right-handed man."

"Belinda Wishart?"

"No, that was a left-handed man."

"Martha Tabram?"

"The modus operandi is quite similar: a quiet place, not a sound made, many blows delivered with a certain level of barbarism. The medical examiner will confirm that it was done by a right-handed person, I'm sure. Here again, we can't exclude it. It's even the most similar case..."

"Emma Smith?"

"That's an easy case to solve. A gang rather than an isolated single man; a victim left alive, and abuse which is more like a message or vengeance, compared to blind brutality. Right or left handed, no matter, only Lestrade would see a link there."

Abberline makes an embarrassed cough.

"As I'm unfortunately afraid that Polly's murder won't be enough to unmask the culprit, we need to be vigilant in the upcoming weeks."

Abberline comes out of his reserve: "I wasn't lied to about your investigative talents, or those of your team. You can count on my full cooperation, as well as those of Coroner Baxter, court mandated on this case. I'll guarantee it!"

** From now on, Head Inspector Abberline (Commercial Street Police Station - 100 EC) and Coroner Wynne E. Baxter (Working Lads' Institute - 10 E) are considered to be informants. Add their addresses to the back of the rulebook. **

Holmes did not take part in this investigation. For completion's sake, the conclusion was written with the help of the following leads:

• Commercial Street Police Station (100 EC)
• Sir Jasper Meeks (38 EC)
• Buck's row (2 E)
• Officer Neil (123 E)
• Criminal Archives (14 WC)
• Somerset House (17 WC)
• Frying Pan (17 E)
• Belinda Wishart (81 E)
• George Yard (67 E)
• Ada Wilson (3 E)
• Baker's Row Asylum (99 E)
• George Street (62 E)

HISTORICAL NOTES

JACK, RIGHT-HANDED OR LEFT-HANDED?

Unlike the conclusions of Doctor Llewellyn's autopsy report, it's generally believed by researchers that Jack was right-handed. Truth be told, no one really knows why the doctor decided in his report that the killer was left-handed, as the spread of blows from left to right would point to the opposite. Llewellyn actually retracted his statements later, when other doctors who had examined the victims all concluded that Jack was instead right-handed. Yet the legend is stronger than truth, and to this day, we still find many references to the "fact" that Jack was left-handed.

NON "CANONICAL" VICTIMS

The list of Jack the Ripper's victims is generally fixed at five. These are the so-called "canonical" victims. However, many feel that the list is no doubt too short and that at least Martha Tabram should be a part of it. We should also note that at the time of the events, most of the press included Emma Smith and Martha Tabram among the Ripper's victims. While the case of Emma Smith is more than dubious, as she was assaulted by a gang, the case of Martha Tabram presents many troubling similarities to the other victims. To Scotland Yard, she was therefore almost certainly one of Jack's victims. However, as her throat hadn't been slit, many researchers feel that she wasn't part of the list, and thus she has been increasingly forgotten by History...

SCORE

Mary Ann Nichols

Chapter 1

First Series

1. Mary Ann Nichols' killer strangled his victim before slitting her throat OR because of the sound of a nearby train (both answers are acceptable - 15 points).

2. Mary Ann Nichols was lying on her back, with her left side against a door. The assassin had to be beside her (20 points).

3. Right handed (15 points).

4. Belinda Wishart (10 points) and Emma Smith (20 points). Any other woman named will cost you 15 points.

5. Martha Tabram (20 points).

Second Series

6. William Grant Grainger, called The Rabbit, and his accomplices from the Nichols' gang (20 points).

7. Emma Smith and her protector Freddy were blackmailing Martine Le Jonc (20 points).

To tally your score, add the points obtained by answering the questions. 80 points is considered to be a success. If you followed more than 15 leads, the investigation is a failure.

The Illustrated Police News

Law Courts and Weekly Record

Price One Penny

Sad Death at Bedlington

Revolting and Mysterious Murder of a Woman - Buck's Row Whitechapel

Attempted Murder and Suicide in Wales

Coroner's Inquest

Finding the Body in Buck's Row

The Murdered Woman

Who Shared Mortuary

Doctors at the Mortuary

Inquest

An Entire Family Murdered

Murderous Outrage at Handsworth