the following summer when it became warmer, fog was an everyday, inescapable fact of life.
There is no doubt that from mid-October 1888 dirty grey fog enveloped the area in and around Miller’s Court. A brief contemporary account of the atmospheric conditions prevailing at the crime scene on the actual morning of Mary Kelly’s murder read: “About half way down this street on the right-hand side is Miller’s Court, the entrance to which is a narrow arched passage, and within a few yards of which, by the way, last night there loomed grimly through the murky air [my italics] a partly torn down bill….” ( The Daily News , 10 November 1888).
At the street entrance to the passage, foul noxious fog would have been thick enough to obscure Lizzie Williams’s facial features sufficiently so as to prevent Maxwell from seeing her clearly, even though she was only standing on the other side of Dorset Street, some twenty feet or so away. Maxwell said she looked ill, even though it is certain that she could not have seen her clearly, so perhaps her face looked ‘different’. Mary Kelly’s clothes would persuade Maxwell that she was talking with her. Lizzie Williams’s Welsh accent would have completed that illusion.
There was something else that persuaded my father and me that we were right in our deduction. At the inquest into Mary Kelly’s death, Caroline Maxwell’s sworn testimony was that when she called across the street to the person she believed to be Mary Kelly, she addressed her by her first name. ‘What, Mary, brings you up so early?’ Lizzie Williams’s first name was also Mary – she had been christened Mary Elizabeth Ann, and that was why she had responded instinctively to Caroline Maxwell’s call.
After each of the murders, the killer would wish to avoid capture: to disappear by some means, blend into the passing crowds and walk unnoticed through tight police cordons. Inspector Frederick Abberline had issued specific orders to police patrolling Whitechapel that they should “observe every man carefully”, and “men and women out together were to be watched too, in case the woman might be protecting the man”. A woman on her own would have been ignored by the police hunting for the murderer. Perhaps Lizzie Williams had adopted the guise of a midwife. It would have been well within her acting abilities and, after each murder when the hue and cry was raised and the police were frantically searching for a man, the murderer would seem to have vanished into thin air, while remaining in plain sight all the time.
Our proposition is this: Dr John Williams desperately wanted a child, but his wife was infertile and unable to conceive. Mary Kelly, on the other hand, was youthful, good-looking and, most importantly , fertile. Williams and Kelly were having an affair and his wife had somehow found out. She might have turned a blind eye to the relationship; after all, Tony Williams suggested that Dr Williams had enjoyed many affairs during the marriage. But Lizzie was becoming increasingly fragile emotionally, and deeply distressed by her infertility. She might have feared that her husband would father a child by Mary Kelly, and this her pride would not allow. So she plotted to murder her; it was an act of revenge committed out of that oldest of emotions, jealousy; the “green-ey’d monster” of Shakespeare’s Othello , and close cousin of envy, the sixth of the Seven Deadly Sins.
All this was straightforward, except for the unanswered questions, such as what was the catalyst that compelled the jealous wife to kill Mary Kelly, and why had she inflicted such terrible wounds upon the unfortunate young woman? Why had she murdered and mutilated Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman and Catherine Eddowes, and why too had she murdered Elizabeth Stride? She might merely have resigned herself to her unhappy situation; after all, her family money would have given her all the comforts and security she needed.
These were
There is no doubt that from mid-October 1888 dirty grey fog enveloped the area in and around Miller’s Court. A brief contemporary account of the atmospheric conditions prevailing at the crime scene on the actual morning of Mary Kelly’s murder read: “About half way down this street on the right-hand side is Miller’s Court, the entrance to which is a narrow arched passage, and within a few yards of which, by the way, last night there loomed grimly through the murky air [my italics] a partly torn down bill….” ( The Daily News , 10 November 1888).
At the street entrance to the passage, foul noxious fog would have been thick enough to obscure Lizzie Williams’s facial features sufficiently so as to prevent Maxwell from seeing her clearly, even though she was only standing on the other side of Dorset Street, some twenty feet or so away. Maxwell said she looked ill, even though it is certain that she could not have seen her clearly, so perhaps her face looked ‘different’. Mary Kelly’s clothes would persuade Maxwell that she was talking with her. Lizzie Williams’s Welsh accent would have completed that illusion.
There was something else that persuaded my father and me that we were right in our deduction. At the inquest into Mary Kelly’s death, Caroline Maxwell’s sworn testimony was that when she called across the street to the person she believed to be Mary Kelly, she addressed her by her first name. ‘What, Mary, brings you up so early?’ Lizzie Williams’s first name was also Mary – she had been christened Mary Elizabeth Ann, and that was why she had responded instinctively to Caroline Maxwell’s call.
After each of the murders, the killer would wish to avoid capture: to disappear by some means, blend into the passing crowds and walk unnoticed through tight police cordons. Inspector Frederick Abberline had issued specific orders to police patrolling Whitechapel that they should “observe every man carefully”, and “men and women out together were to be watched too, in case the woman might be protecting the man”. A woman on her own would have been ignored by the police hunting for the murderer. Perhaps Lizzie Williams had adopted the guise of a midwife. It would have been well within her acting abilities and, after each murder when the hue and cry was raised and the police were frantically searching for a man, the murderer would seem to have vanished into thin air, while remaining in plain sight all the time.
Our proposition is this: Dr John Williams desperately wanted a child, but his wife was infertile and unable to conceive. Mary Kelly, on the other hand, was youthful, good-looking and, most importantly , fertile. Williams and Kelly were having an affair and his wife had somehow found out. She might have turned a blind eye to the relationship; after all, Tony Williams suggested that Dr Williams had enjoyed many affairs during the marriage. But Lizzie was becoming increasingly fragile emotionally, and deeply distressed by her infertility. She might have feared that her husband would father a child by Mary Kelly, and this her pride would not allow. So she plotted to murder her; it was an act of revenge committed out of that oldest of emotions, jealousy; the “green-ey’d monster” of Shakespeare’s Othello , and close cousin of envy, the sixth of the Seven Deadly Sins.
All this was straightforward, except for the unanswered questions, such as what was the catalyst that compelled the jealous wife to kill Mary Kelly, and why had she inflicted such terrible wounds upon the unfortunate young woman? Why had she murdered and mutilated Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman and Catherine Eddowes, and why too had she murdered Elizabeth Stride? She might merely have resigned herself to her unhappy situation; after all, her family money would have given her all the comforts and security she needed.
These were
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