Twenty-three-year-old Francis Coles was the last possible Ripper victim and perhaps the prettiest of them all. She was murdered in the early hours of 13 February 1891 under a railway arch in Royal Mint Street. Her throat was slashed only moments before a policeman arrived on the scene. There were no abdominal mutilations. She had injuries to the back of her head consistent with being thrown to the pavement and her throat had been cut while she was lying on the pavement. The policeman who discovered the body heard footsteps walking away, but police rules required that he stay with the body as she appeared to be still alive. Had he followed the footsteps, he may have caught the murderer.
Coles was last seen alive at 1.45am and found dying at 2.15am. At 1.45am, she had bumped into fellow prostitute Ellen Gallagher in Commercial Street, passing ‘a violent man in a cheese cutter hat’. Apparently Gallagher remembered the man as a former client who had given her a black eye and warned Coles not to entertain him, but Coles ignored her friend’s advice and solicited the man. She and the stranger headed toward the direction of the Minories. This was the last time she was seen alive. It appears that no follow-up enquiries were carried out by the police to trace or identify the man.
The medical reports of Dr Phillips, who performed the post-mortem, and Dr F.J. Oxley, the first doctor at the scene, revealed the following.
• The victim appeared, from a number of injuries to the back of the head, to have been thrown violently to the ground.
• Her throat was cut, most likely, according to both Dr Phillips and Dr F.J. Oxley, while she was lying on the pavement.
• Phillips believed the killer held her head back by the chin with his left hand, cutting the throat with his right.
• The knife passed the throat three times – first from left to right, then from right to left, and once more from left to right (Phillips). Oxley believed there were two wounds as there was only one incision in the skin but two openings in the larynx.
• The killer struck from the right side of the body (Phillips) or from the front (Oxley).
• The body was tilted at the moment the wound was inflicted in a manner so that the killer would avoid becoming bloodstained.
• The victim’s clothes were in order and there was no abdominal mutilation.
• The killer exhibited no anatomical knowledge (Phillips).
• Part of the left ear had been torn off, as if as a result of an earring being ripped from the ear some time previously, but the injury was thoroughly healed.
• Tenpence was found hidden behind a lamppost or downpipe – presumably the victim’s earnings from her final client.
Was Frances Coles a Ripper victim? Her throat was cut, but, unlike in the other Whitechapel slayings, a blunt knife was used. There seems to have been no evidence of strangulation. There was no mutilation of the abdomen and the clothes were not disarranged. The murder site, as in the case of Elizabeth Stride, was south of Whitechapel Road.
The Ripper may have ceased his onslaught for eight months and then resumed his slayings with Frances Coles. Or was she just another victim of the violent world of Whitechapel of the time? My initial impression is that her murder is perhaps not connected to any of the others, but during my investigation I may be able to uncover other evidence to prove or disprove this.
Having examined the murders in great detail and highlighted both the important differences and the similarities, I now had to look at what motives there could be for any of the murders; to examine any evidence pointing to a suspect or suspects; and to try to establish whether all or some of the murders were the work of one killer or different killers.