Robert Mann had the luck of the devil. But he probably did not think so as he made his way west. We cannot know what riot of emotions tumbled through his head. He had psyched himself up to kill Liz Stride and the knife in his pocket was still sticky with her blood. Whatever was still rational in him at that moment would have told him to turn left out of Dutfield’s Yard and scuttle along Berner Street, to cross Commercial Road and lose himself in the labyrinth of streets that led to the mortuary and beyond to the sanctuary in Baker’s Row.
But the killer in him held him back. It may have been a momentary decision to turn right out of the Yard, but it was the correct one. This was the way Diemschutz and Kozebrodsky would run moments later, searching in vain for a policeman. And by turning right into Fairclough Street, Mann would not have run into Eagle or the two policemen he found, nor Edward Spooner, standing with his ‘young woman’ outside the Beehive pub and drawn to Dutfield’s Yard moments later out of sheer curiosity.
The killer in Robert Mann would not let him go home because he had unfinished business. He had cut the throat of the whore in Dutfield’s Yard, but he had not carried out the rest of his work and that impulse pushed him on. He moved ever further west and we do not know why. Geoprofiler Spencer Chainey believes that he did turn north up Berner Street onto the Commercial Road, weighing the risks as he went. Certainly, there would have been more people here, including police patrols, but Robert Mann could blend ‘for England’ and he had walked away from murder scenes before, a bloody knife in his pocket. Why would he have done this? Because, Chainey believes, this was his comfort zone and he knew that area like the back of his hand. The labyrinth of alleyways to the south-west of Berner Street may have been relatively unknown to him.
Instinctively he had to get away from the murder site. It was around one o’clock now and he must have known that the whole area would soon be jumping with policemen, doctors and locals. Who knows how many patrols he almost ran into? How many beat coppers walked past him. He was experienced by now, an old hand at the killing game. In his dark billycock hat and old overcoat, he would not have attracted undue attention as long as he kept his pace brisk. Loiter and a copper might notice. Run and the boys in blue would have had him.
Spencer Chainey’s argument is persuasive, but I still believe Mann walked south-west, down Backchurch Lane and across the railway sidings at Hooper Street. Once there it would be natural to carry on along Great Prescott Street and on to Goodman’s Yard and the Minories. Anywhere along this route, he may have paused at the sight of a woman standing on a pavement, weighed his options, made his choice. That one was wrong; there was too much light there; that one was with two men. Serial killers are high risk merchants, but there are limits even for them. He turned right up the Minories and left along George Street. Another choice: Jewry Street or the Crutched Friars? He chose right and crossed Aldgate.
Now he was not only out of his killing fields, his comfort zone, he was in the jurisdiction of the City Police. He probably did not know that and certainly did not care. All that mattered to him was to find another victim, to finish the job he started in Dutfield’s Yard. Somewhere in the tangle of streets around Aldgate, he saw a woman, middle-aged, touting for custom. Perhaps they talked business on the pavement briefly before she took him down a dark alleyway. It was part of her regular patch, ideal for the purpose. Perhaps he looked up at the iron plate on the wall and saw the name Mitre Square. It was ideal for his purpose too.
On the last day of her life, Catherine Eddowes, known as Kate, joined her lover, a market porter called John Kelly, at the workhouse in Shoe Lane. Unlike many couples whom the conditions of the time drove apart through deprivation and drink, Kelly and Kate seem to have been relatively loyal and happy. They had been hop-picking in Kent the previous week and although the work was back-breaking, it usually provided cash and was regarded by most Eastenders as the equivalent of a holiday. Two days earlier, Kate had gone to the casual ward at Mile End while Kelly dossed in Cooney’s lodging house in Thrawl Street. In one of those infuriating red herrings that dog Ripper studies, Kate told the deputy at Cooney’s – ‘I have come back to earn the reward offered for the apprehension of the Whitechapel murderer. I think I know him.’ The deputy urged Kate to be careful she did not become a victim – ‘No fear of that,’ she said.1
On that Saturday morning, Kate took a pair of Kelly’s boots to a pawn shop in Church Street and got half a crown for them. She got a ticket in the name she had given – Jane Kelly – sending Ripperologists into a flurry of conspiracy mania; Mary Jane Kelly would become Robert Mann’s next victim. Between ten and eleven, Kelly and Kate had breakfast with tea and sugar they had bought, but by two o’clock their money had gone. Kate left Kelly in Houndsditch and went to Bermondsey to scrounge some cash from her married daughter, Annie Phillips, but couldn’t find her.
By half past eight, however, Kate was lying drunk on the pavement outside No 29 Aldgate High Street with a small crowd around her. This was of course a common occurrence; most of those who stumbled upon Mann’s victims assumed at first that they were drunks. City Constable 31 Louis Robinson and Constable George Simmons bundled Kate off to Bishopsgate Police Station. When the desk sergeant, James Byfield, asked her her name, she replied sullenly, ‘Nothing.’ It could almost sum up women of the Abyss in the way the rest of society regarded them.
By quarter past twelve, when Robert Mann was on his way to Berner Street, Kate was awake and happier. She was singing quietly to herself in her cell. A quarter of an hour later she tried to persuade Constable George Hutt that she was capable and at one o’clock, by which time Mann was on his way west, Hutt finally cracked. ‘Too late for you to get any more drink,’ he told her, knowing full well that closing time in the East End was no more than a serving suggestion. ‘I shall get a damned fine hiding when I get home,’ she said, a reminder of the daily reality of domestic relations for the working class. She gave her name as she left as Mary Ann Kelly and her address as 6 Fashion Street. ‘All right,’ she called to Sergeant Byfield at the door of the station. ‘Goodnight, old cock.’
These were the last recorded words of Catherine Eddowes. She was seen at 1.35 am by three men: Joseph Lawende, a cigarette salesman; Harry Harris, a furniture dealer; and Joseph Levy, a kosher butcher, who were all on their way home from a night at the Imperial Club down the road. Kate was talking to a man and had a hand on his chest.
The information forthcoming from these men, especially Lawende, who was regarded by the police as an excellent witness, would be brought into sharp focus just over ten minutes later when City Constable 881 Edward Watkins got back to the Mitre Square section of his beat. He had been there fourteen minutes earlier, at 1.30, and had seen nothing unusual at all. The Square was very quiet, with only two houses (one occupied by a City policeman, 922 Richard Pearse) and dominated by various warehouses belonging to Kearley and Tongue. Horner and Co also had warehouses there and a Mr Taylor ran a shop at one of the three entrances to the Square itself.