KEY POINTS:
'PC.97J. NEIL reports at 3.45.a[m] 31st inst, he found the dead body of a woman lying on her back with her clothes a little above her knees ... ' So begins a vivid account on lined notepaper, by a Superintendent J. Keating, under the heading 'Metropolitan Police'. The ink seems as fresh as a morning newspaper. Yet it is dated August 31, 1888.
This is one of the police reports filed just hours after Jack the Ripper claimed another victim in London's East End. It is one of numerous documents relating to the Victorian killer which, after more than a century in the archives, are to go on public display for the first time.
Handwritten accounts from the scenes of the crimes, detectives' case reports, coroners' inquiry records, witness statements, photographs and letters will form the centrepiece of a major exhibition, 'Jack the Ripper and the East End', at the Museum in Docklands, London.
Visitors will not be spared graphic descriptions, such as 'her throat cut from ear to ear', in the retelling of the bloody and gruesome crimes.
"They are absolutely amazing," said Julia Hoffbrand, curator of the exhibition, slated to begin on May 15.
"They were written on the day each woman was found, so as a step by step account you get a real sense of what happened. The documents bring home the fact that these are real people and real events. They are very moving."
The files were first kept at Scotland Yard, then transferred to the National Archives in Kew, west London. But due to their fragile condition they could only be viewed on microfiche.
"It's a rare opportunity to see the actual documents in the original ink," Hoffbrand said.
The police report of 31 August 1888 continues: Dr. Llewellyn, No.152 Whitechapel Ro[ad] ... arrived quickly and pronounced life to be extinct, apparently but [a] few minutes, he directed her removed to the mortuary, stating he would make a further examination there, which was done on the ambulance. It has since been ascertained that the dress bears the marks of Lambeth Workhouse and deceased is supposed to have been an inmate of that house.
Jack the Ripper is believed to have killed five prostitutes in or near Whitechapel in 10 weeks between August and November 1888. More than 170 names have been put forward as suspects including the Duke of Clarence, the artist Walter Sickert, who had a morbid obsession with the killings, Montague John Druitt, a barrister who took his own life just after the last murder, and Michael Ostrog, a Russian thief.
- OBSERVER
