Jack The Ripper - Mark Whitehead [5]
The doctor called to the scene, Dr Timothy Killeen, arrived around 5.30am, and estimated that the woman had been dead for three hours. She had been stabbed 39 times. As there was no public mortuary in Whitechapel the police took the body to the workhouse infirmary in Old Montague Street. Killeen conducted the post-mortem, finding wounds to both lungs, the heart, liver, spleen and stomach as well as the breasts and genital area. He concluded that most of the wounds had been inflicted by a right-handed assailant and that all the wounds bar one could have been inflicted by an ordinary penknife. However, one wound penetrated the sternum, and Killeen thought that this must have been inflicted by a dagger or possibly a bayonet. Whether this wound had been caused by another assailant, Killeen did not speculate, but he contended that it was possibly made by a left-handed person unlike the others. It has been pointed out that he may have been unaware that the standard-issue triangular bayonet had been withdrawn from issue the previous year and that the blade replacing it could well have made all of the wounds.
At the coroner’s inquest on 9 August, the deputy coroner for south-east Middlesex, George Collier (Wynne Baxter was on holiday) remained hopeful that the body would be identified. Three women had come forward but identified the dead woman under three different names. The inquest was adjourned for a fortnight. On 14 August, Henry Tabram, Martha’s ex-husband, positively identified her. He’d only learned of her death when he noticed the name Tabram mentioned in one of the newspaper reports of the murder.
Meanwhile, Mary Ann Connolly had come forward to give details of Martha’s last night. On 9 August, she told the police at Commercial Street station that she could identify both soldiers if she saw them again. An identity parade of corporals and privates in the Grenadier Guards who had been on leave that evening was assembled at the Tower of London the following day. Connolly failed to show. Later traced by the police to her cousin’s house in Drury Lane, Connolly was taken to a second identity parade at the Tower on 13 August, but failed to identify the men. She now said that they’d had white bands around their caps, which suggested they were Coldstream Guards. A similar parade was assembled at Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk on 15 August. Here Connolly picked out Guardsmen George and Skipper, both of whom had strong alibis. Let down once more by ‘Pearly Poll,’ the police did not seek her questionable assistance any further.
PC Barrett also attended identity parades at the Tower. On 8 August he picked out two men. Later, Barrett admitted his first choice was wrong (this private wore medals whereas the man Barrett encountered on the 7th wore none).The second, Private John Leary, had been drinking with Private Law in Brixton until closing time. Losing Law, Leary had returned via Battersea and Chelsea, meeting up with Law once more in the Strand at about 4.30am. They had reached barracks around 6.00am. Law corroborated Leary’s statement.
Inspector Edmund Reid of H Division CID organised the identity parades and questioned those guards picked out by Connolly and Barrett. In his report dated 24 September 1888 he concludes: ‘Having both picked out the wrong men they could not be trusted again as their evidence would be worthless.’
The time lapse between Tabram’s disappearance with the guardsman (11.45pm) and her estimated time of death (2.30am) seems curious. It is certainly possible that she found another client after the private. It may also be possible that the soldier PC Barrett saw at 2.00am was not the same one that Connolly had been with earlier. Further to this, Private Law could only corroborate that part of Private Leary’s story for which