Jack The Ripper - Mark Whitehead [4]
Also present at the inquest was Chief Inspector John West of H Division. West would become acting Superintendent during the murder investigations of Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman, and be responsible for combining the enquiries into the Whitechapel murders under Inspector Abberline. At this point,West had no official information on the assault.
The jury’s verdict was ‘Wilful murder by some person or persons unknown’. Unofficially, it was believed that Smith had been killed by members of a band of street thugs from The Nichol, a slum area near Old Nichol Street at the top of Brick Lane. The gang’s preferred livelihood consisted of extracting protection money from East End prostitutes and it was possible that they’d brutalised Smith as a warning to other women to pay up or suffer similar treatment.
Martha Tabram
Martha Tabram (aka Martha Turner, Emma Turner) was the ex-wife of Henry Samuel Tabram, foreman packer at a furniture warehouse. They’d had two sons but separated in 1875 because of Martha’s excessive drinking. By 1879 she was living with Henry Turner, a street hawker. He too found Martha’s drinking difficult to cope with. As a result they often spent periods apart and finally separated in July 1888. Martha supported herself through prostitution and selling trinkets on the streets. During this time, she took lodgings at 19, George Street, Spitalfields, living there under the name Emma Turner. On Saturday 4 August 1888, Martha met Turner in Leadenhall Street where he gave her money to buy some more trinkets to sell. It was the last time that he saw her.
The following Monday, Martha went out for the evening with Mary Ann Connolly (also known as ‘Pearly Poll’). According to Connolly they met two guardsmen, a corporal and a private, in The Two Brewers pub, most likely situated in Brick Lane. They drank with their new-found acquaintances in various other pubs, including the White Swan in Whitechapel High Street until about 11.45pm when they paired off to have sex. Connolly and the corporal went to Angel Alley (situated next to Osborn Street), while Martha and the private went into George Yard (now Gunthorpe Street). The buildings there were relatively new (constructed in 1875) but cheap, single-room dwellings, occupied by the poorest in the area.
At around 2.00am, PC Thomas Barrett was patrolling the area. He encountered a soldier he later described as being a Grenadier Guardsman. The soldier was in his early-to-late twenties, 5 feet 9 inches tall, with a fair complexion, dark hair and a small brown moustache turned up at the ends.The man was loitering in Wentworth Street. He claimed he was ‘waiting for a chum who had gone with a girl’. Barrett later stated he would recognise the soldier, a private, if he saw him again. This he was later asked to do.
Arriving home at 3.30am, a cab driver, Albert Crow, came across a body on the first-floor landing of George Yard buildings. He thought it was a tramp sleeping rough, a regular occurrence in the area. At 4.45am in the same block, John Reeves, a waterside labourer, left his home to seek work. He also saw the body on the landing but was more observant than Crow. He saw that it was a woman lying on her back in a pool of blood. He immediately sought a police officer and found PC Barrett, who sent for a doctor. Barrett