The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbelow

Author:Donald Rumbelow [Rumbelow, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141914367
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

The story goes on to describe Dr Stanley vowing to revenge himself on Kelly. This means scouring the East End for her. He spends a week or two to familiarize himself with the underworld and night life of London, creeping through alleys and back streets and learning how to dodge from one street to another without being seen. For his first encounter with a prostitute Stanley goes to Wardour Street where he knows that Kelly had once lived. To his dismay she is no longer there. He curses the woman now living in her old lodgings, and who, after she has listened to his tirade, slams her door and mutters, ‘My God! I’m glad I’m not Marie. If I was that man would kill me. Somebody ought to tell Marie, but I don’t know what’s become of her.’

Clearly this is fiction.

In spite of his statement that he could not prove the existence of Dr Stanley, Matters neatly dovetails into his story the evidence of a Mrs North who describes her meeting with a man she thought was a doctor, a man of forty-five to forty-seven years of age, sinewy and strong, of tremendous force and will. ‘His eyes were dark and glowed with fire,’ says Matters. Dr Stanley subsequently learns that Kelly is living in the East End, and disguises his appearance. ‘A change of attire; a slouching gait; a garbled form of English … or an imitated foreign accent …’ At the same time he resolves to kill all the women whom he questions, it does not matter how many, so overwhelmingly strong is his desire for revenge. His first victim is Martha Tabram. Stanley panics and stabs her simultaneously with his surgical knife and triangular-shaped bayonet. Polly Nichols is his next victim and this time being calmer and more in control of himself he succumbs to another impulse and disembowels her for the specimen he wants for his surgical museum. He obtains further physiological specimens from Annie Chapman, Liz Stride and Catharine Eddowes who, before she is murdered, gives him the name and address of Kelly’s lodgings. Here again there is a blending of fact and fiction, because the other name that Eddowes used was Kelly and it would have been easy for Stanley, if his story had been true, to have assumed that she was the woman he was looking for. Eventually Stanley, after keeping observation on Mary Kelly, overhears her say that her man has left her and that she’ll be out on the streets unless someone pays her rent.

He follows her to Miller’s Court and, awaiting his chance, creeps into her unlocked room. Shaking her awake he reveals his identity and gives her a chance to speak before he kills her. She has only time to scream ‘Murder’ before he uses the knife. His revenge is complete.

Afterwards Stanley wanders the world for ten years, apparently without his famous collection, and finally settles down in Buenos Aires. There he lives for some years and, recognizing a

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