It was probably the secret ambition of every copper in the Met and City forces to catch Jack the Ripper. Perhaps because of this and the freshness of the corpse, Andrews broke every rule in the book by not staying with the body and summoning aid with his whistle. Andrews, a Suffolk man, had been with the Met for eight years, but now he was chasing Jack experience and procedure went out of the window. Now he did blow his whistle and almost at once came upon a man carrying a dinner plate walking towards Wentworth Street. He was Isaac Lewis Jacobs, who lived at 12 New Castle Street and was on his way to McCarthy’s chandler’s shop in Dorset Street to buy some supper.

Conspiracy theorists would have a field day with this coincidence. We know enough about the milieu of the East End not to be surprised by a man going out to an all-night grocer, nor even that he was carrying a plate expecting to buy some hot food. John McCarthy of course had been Mary Kelly’s landlord. Surely, Jacobs could have found a nearer shop than Dorset Street for his purposes? Whatever suspicions Andrews had of the man, he marched him back to Alice McKenzie’s corpse.

It was raining by this time and Sergeant Badham came at the run, having heard Andrews’ whistle. He examined the corpse briefly, ascertained who Jacobs was and told Andrews to stay put this time. Badham went in search of the other two beat coppers, Joseph Allen and George Neve. Constable 423H Allen had already talked to Andrews and had paused under the lamppost where Alice now lay at about 12.15 am. He had seen nothing then. Now, Badham sent him running back to the station along Commercial Street for the duty inspector and, if he could, to rouse a doctor. Constable 101H Neve was detailed to search the area, rummaging in the rain behind carts, costermongers’ barrows and hoardings. He found nothing. The only thing to find, the murder weapon, was in Robert Mann’s pocket.

By ten past one, Dr George Bagster Phillips arrived, in the pouring rain and made his preliminary observations. The dead woman’s head was turned to the right, revealing a gash on the left side of the throat. There were various cuts, including a deep one to the abdomen, but no attempt at actual disembowelling. He ordered officers to load the corpse onto the ambulance and take it to the Whitechapel Workhouse Mortuary. By that time, Inspector Edmund Reid had arrived and sent his men in all directions asking questions in dosshouses about anyone who had recently arrived with bloodstained hands.

We cannot know what was going through Robert Mann’s twisted mind. On the one hand, according to the now well-known pattern, he was in the totem phase. Had he actually taken a totem or trophy from Alice McKenzie? When the police had lifted the body, they found a clay pipe lying on the still dry road. Was that her only pipe – or had Mann helped himself to another, now in his possession? Outwardly, of course, the mortuary attendant pauper was in control again, hanging his wet coat up before slipping back to his bed via the back door.

There is no record of whether Mann was actually called back to the mortuary by the officers with Alice’s body, but as the mortuary attendant, this was highly likely. As before, he got up when roused by the superintendent or night staff and no doubt went straight into his assumed role of horror-struck member of the public. Only he can imagine his own sensations as his latest handiwork was rolled past him over the cobbles at Pavilion Yard to the slab. Whether he washed or laid out the body is unknown, but he would certainly have had some opportunity to remind himself that this time, the work had not been quite what it was. The mutilations were limited because he’d heard the tread of Andrews’ size tens and had dashed away more silently than he’d come, south to Whitechapel High Street. From there, an unhurried ‘normal’ walk would have seen him home in ten minutes. But the wounds to the throat… a shadow of the Ripper in his prime only eight months ago.

Perhaps Mann was still there later that morning when the police took a photograph of Clay Pipe Alice. She looks asleep, her lower lip protruding slightly, her wiry hair turning grey. She has dimpled cheeks and blankets around her to cover her modesty. And her hair has been combed.

Dr Phillips must have carried out his post mortem in the leaky old shed that same day because he gave evidence the day after, the second day of the inquest. The overworked Wynne Baxter began proceedings again at the Working Lads’ Institute on Whitechapel Road later that first day, 17 July, calling in succession, John McCormack and Elizabeth Ryder, both to prove who the dead woman was and to establish some pattern for the last day of her life. It speaks volumes for life in the Abyss that having lived with the woman for over seven years, McCormack had no idea whether she’d been married or had children.

The third witness at the inquest was Constable Neve who confirmed that Alice worked as a prostitute around Brick Lane, Gun Street and Dorset Street. Lastly came Sarah Smith, the manageress of the Whitechapel Baths and Washhouses on Goulston Street. The back of these premises (where Mrs Smith lived) looked out onto Castle Alley, in fact the exact spot where Mann had killed Alice McKenzie. The luck which surrounded him like an aura was with him once more. Mrs Smith had gone to bed between 12.15 and 12.30 am and had sat up reading. Her windows were closed and she heard and saw nothing. Feet from where she lay, Jack the Ripper was now claiming his last victim. The first that Sarah Smith knew anything was wrong was when she heard the shrill sound of Andrews’ whistle.

The inquest continued the next day, with Inspector Reid outlining operations of his team in the area. Dr Phillips gave a brief report, in keeping with the policy adopted at the Mary Kelly inquest. This served to dampen the ever-growing prurience of the Press and to prevent any possible copycat work. Phillips’ report, completed by 22 July, was as full as ever. Mann’s mortuary must have been very crowded on the 17th with Phillips, Chief Surgeon McKellar (who brought a friend!), Dr Gordon Brown, the City Police Surgeon and a Mr Bostwick who seems to have been a morbidly curious ghoul who was not allowed to stay long. There would have been a rich irony indeed if it was mortuary keeper Mann who showed him off the premises.

The cause of death in the case of Alice McKenzie was severance of the left carotid artery, caused by the two jagged wounds Phillips found there. Each one was no more than four inches long and the windpipe had not been severed. Bruising on the chest and abdomen suggested pressure marks caused by a right hand with the knife wounds being inflicted with the left. It was this, as well as the superficiality of the stomach cuts, that led Phillips to believe that Alice had not been killed by the same assailant who had murdered the others. He was careful to state that this was his opinion only on ‘anatomical and professional’ grounds.

The police thought differently. The age and occupation of the deceased, the speed and silence of the attack all screamed ‘Ripper’. Police Commissioner James Monro wrote:

I need not say that every effort will be made by the police to discover the murderer, who, I am inclined to believe is identical with the notorious ‘Jack the Ripper’ of last year.

In essence, Jack was back and to that end Dr Thomas Bond, very familiar with the earlier murders, was brought in by Anderson. His report read:

I see in this murder evidence of similar design to the former Whitechapel murders, viz. Sudden onslaught on the prostrate woman, the throat skilfully and resolutely cut with subsequent mutilation indicating sexual thoughts and a desire to mutilate the abdomen and sexual organs.

In other words, all that had prevented Mann from his usual ferocious mutilations was the arrival of Constable Andrews. In fact, it was not that simple…

Robert Anderson did not accept Bond’s findings, writing many years later in his memoirs that Clay Pipe Alice was ‘an ordinary murder and not the work of a sexual maniac’. When we read nonsense like this, it is not remotely surprising that Mann was never caught. An ‘ordinary’ murder does not exist and any attack on the genitals is sex-related. Coming from a lawyer whose police career specialized in ‘matters relating to political crime’ (particularly Irish activities) the lack of understanding is perhaps not surprising, but Anderson was the officer in charge of the Whitechapel murders investigation and ultimately his word was law. Robert Mann was lucky again.

Apart from Margaret Franklin, who had called to Alice along Flower and Dean Street less than one hour before her death, the only other witness called on the second day of the inquest was Margaret Cheeks, another inmate at 52 Gun Street and another prostitute. The sole reason for her appearance seems to be that she had vanished on the night Alice died and there were briefly fears of another ‘double event’. In fact Margaret had gone to visit her sister and there was no harm done.

On the second day of the inquest, William Wallace Brodie walked into Leman Street Police Station. He had been drinking and wanted to confess that he was the Whitechapel murderer, his conscience plagued particularly by the killing of Alice. The police of course had been here before, more than once, but because Monro in particular believed that the Ripper was on the streets again, patrols were stepped up once more and no stone was to be unturned. Brodie’s statement must have left the recording officer open-mouthed. In one section he claimed to have walked from Land’s End to London in half an hour. When this was queried by the officer, Brodie conceded this might have been forty-five minutes.

Just in case, Brodie was detained to appear in the police court on 20 July charged with the murder of Alice McKenzie. A week later however, police enquiries had proved that Brodie had taken ship to South Africa on 6 September 1888, the day Polly Nichols was buried. He did not return until 15 July 1889, so he could not possibly have killed Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes or Mary Kelly. When he appeared again on the 27th he was discharged but re-arrested immediately for wasting police time.

In the world of Ripperology, opinion is divided over the murder of Alice McKenzie. Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow believe it was a ‘cover-up’ killing, that Alice was murdered by someone she knew and that the relatively feeble mutilations were an attempt to pass the buck to the notorious Jack and allay suspicion. Philip Sugden believes that Alice may well have been a Ripper victim and John Eddlestone is sure of it. So am I.

But why, then, were the wounds not identical? Part of the answer, as we have seen, is that Robert Mann was interrupted before he could finish his work. He had made one 7-inch gash in Alice’s stomach already and then he heard the thud of Constable Andrews’ boots. And, of course, he too had been here before with the murder of Liz Stride, when travelling salesman Louis Diemschutz had arrived in Dutfield’s Yard as Mann crouched, literally red-handed, behind the wooden gate. Then he had gone on to finish the work, his blood up, his lust uncontrollable, on Kate Eddowes in Mitre Square. There is no evidence of a second attack on 16/17 July, despite the temporary disappearance of Margaret Cheeks.

I believe that the difference in the throat wound – two cuts rather than a single deep slash that led to near-decapitation – is caused by the fact that Robert Mann was now ill. This may also explain an inability to follow up the crime à la Eddowes. By the summer of 1889 Robert Mann was already suffering from phthisis, the lung disease which would kill him six years later.

The symptoms of tuberculosis, a major killer well into the twentieth century, can be felt five or six years before death. In the most likely form that Mann had – fibrous phthisis – there is coughing, a hoarse, rasping voice and a shortage of breath. Exertion – for instance ripping throats and abdomens – causes immediate exhaustion.

Because we know so little about Mann, of course, we cannot know whether he was coughing by now. In the workhouse and on the streets of Whitechapel everybody coughed. Interestingly, the remedies of the day involved avoidance of alcohol (Mann couldn’t have afforded it), a simple diet (which was all the workhouse offered) and a cold environment (the workhouse was rarely anything else).

Ripperologists and historians have racked their brains to explain why the killings stopped when they did. Because most are obsessed with Macnaghten’s observations on the ‘canonical five’, to them the last death is of course that of Mary Kelly. Serial killers, they contend, do not merely give up killing and take up a less obnoxious hobby like stamp collecting. To explain this, a number of solutions have been put forward: Jack died (Montague John Druitt, who committed suicide in the Thames); or he was incarcerated (Aaron Kosminski, sent to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum); or he emigrated (‘Dr’ Francis Tumblety, effectively, going home to America).

We need not look for anything so dramatic. And the whole issue turns on the pattern of serial killing and the length of time such a killer lies dormant. Because the Whitechapel murders happened in such a cluster – six in twelve weeks in the Autumn of 1888 – we naturally assume that this rollercoaster would have continued. This is wrong. What Melville Macnaghten called ‘the awful glut’ in Miller’s Court sated Mann for thirty-three weeks. And after that, he remained dormant, probably because his disease would not let him do anything else. Albert de Salvo, the Boston Strangler, killed thirteen women in eighteen months; then he reverted to rape, letting his victims live. The compulsion to kill had gone. ‘Il Monstro’, the ‘Monster of Florence’ killed sixteen people between 1968 and 1985, but there was a gap of six years between the first and second murders and seven years between that and the third. And there were minor consolations along the way. On the morning of Friday 13 February 1891, the body of Frances Coles, known as ‘Carrotty Nell’ was brought in an ambulance to Mann’s mortuary. He would have officiated, if he was well enough, as Dr Phillips carried out the post mortem. She was a prostitute and her throat had been cut but she was not a victim of the Ripper.

To say that Robert Mann had committed the perfect murders would be far from true. To say that he committed seven murders and got away with them all is at once astonishing and yet, to historians of the nineteenth century, no surprise at all.