The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories

Book 311: Mammoth Books

by Maxim Jakubowski

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Maxim Jakubowski, together with Nathan Braund, edited the bestselling Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper (1999), which has reprinted several times and was reissued in 2008 in a revised and expanded edition. The book focused on the countless theories that have been put forward with regard to the identity of the notorious Victorian serial killer and offered an extensive 100-page section presenting all the known facts in the case. It included 30 essays written by the most famous, often controversial Ripperologists putting forward their own theories. It remains one of the few titles to offer a series of alternative solutions to Jack the Ripper's identity and the truth behind the Whitechapel murders. But how many new theories and identities can researchers come up with? In this wonderful collection of brand-new stories, Jakubowski has compiled an extraordinary array of explorations into the identity of Jack the Ripper - this time unabashedly fictional, unrestrained by history and the known facts. Contributors include Carol Anne Davis, Martin Edwards, Peter Guttridge, Barbara Nadel;Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Sally Spedding. 'Jack the Ripper' has appeared in a number of novels, as the lead character in some, beginning with Marie Belloc Lowndes's The Lodger (1913), filmed by Hitchcock. Authors as diverse as Michael Dibdin, Lindsay Faye, Philip Jose Farmer, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Alan Moore, Fredric Brown, Ramsey Campbell and Colin Wilson have all used poetic licence to 'revive' the notorious killer. The varied stories in this fantastic new collection continue this tradition with many possible identities put forward, some already suggested by historians, others more speculative, including famous names from history and fiction. Even Sherlock Holmes is on the case!

Release date: November 12, 2015

Publisher: Robinson

Print pages: 576

Sample

The looming spectre of the famous Whitechapel serial killer haunts us still. Evil and elusive, he emerged from the foggy East End of London at the end of the nineteenth century, one of the first heavily documented serial killer of note, and his shadow has weaved its compulsive spell over us ever since. Made more emblematic by the fact that he was never caught, of course, leaving the mystery wide open for generations to speculate wildly about his identity, his intentions, modus operandi and the reason he vanished into thin air, both at the scene of the horrible crimes he was responsible for as well as from existence altogether when the murders suddenly came to a halt.

Over a decade back, I compiled, with my colleague and author Nathan Braund, a non-fiction Mammoth volume about the facts behind Jack the Ripper, collecting some of the countless theories about his identity and motives from the prolific pens of many specialists, some of whom proudly call themselves “Ripperologists”, together with a lengthy analysis of all the known facts behind his historical criminal spree. The volume did not intend to solve the mystery, just to offer various handfuls of theories as to what actually happened in the dark, narrow streets of Whitechapel on those fateful nights and to analyse the many efforts to catch the dreaded culprit. At the time it was, so to speak, a state of the art of Ripper knowledge. Needless to say that since, further theories have been advanced by new experts and researchers. And so it will go on and I personally doubt whether the case will ever be solved to anyone’s satisfaction.

Despite the horrible nature of the killings attributed to Jack the Ripper, he has cast a seductive spell ever since in the imagination of readers, historians and the general public and has become a somewhat dubious icon who has been at the origin of what is a veritable industry, both on the page and the screen.

Rather than align yet new speculations and variations on the identity parade of suspects, I thought it would be fascinating to gather a group of both noted and upcoming writers and novelists from the thriller and horror genres to resurrect Jack the Ripper, his aura and his shadow and influence in a series of brand-new short stories, not so much putting the terrible events he was involved in under a microscope, but looking at the way he has captured the imagination of the world and still survives today in the collective unconscious.

Some of the tales are fantastical, others wonderfully speculative, and seductiveness and horror share the page on an equal footing. Many adhere to the known facts and try to offer a new point of view, a look at the man behind the legend and the reasons behind his awful killing spree and his sudden disappearance, while others involve the sleuths and policemen hunting him down, but overall imagination set free was the order of the day and I believe our team of fictioneers have done a wonderful job in bringing the character–and he is indeed now a major character in the annals of writing – alive, albeit even more mysterious and elusive than he ever was.

Enjoy and walk carefully at night through those dark streets!

Maxim Jakubowski

 

 

8 November 1888

There were lots of myths about the Irish. They were all Fenians, they were dirty, they lived with pigs. Maybe. What did Shmuel Kominsky know of the Irish? He knew the Burke girls. Four little seamstresses to break your heart – Mary, Concepta, Dolores and Assumpta. All under twenty-five, red-headed with tiny fingers that flew along a hem like birds.

Unlike the Jewesses, they smiled and they didn’t swear like the Cockneys. The Burkes were perfect ladies and, in another, better life, they would probably have all become nuns. But not in Spitalfields. Not even with that brother of theirs forever guarding their chastity.

Albert ‘Bertie’ Burke was a man to be reckoned with. Spare and small, he was a dour type, dark like a Romany and handsome enough to break a woman’s heart. Not that he had. Too busy. People who did his sort of work always were.

‘Come now, girls, it grows dark and if I’m to get back to my business it has to be now.’

Four red heads looked up and smiled. The rest of the women just carried on with their work. They all knew Bertie Burke. Even the most recently arrived immigrant knew what a moneylender looked like.

The Burke girls all curtsied before they left. Little fake ladies in a room full of bombazine and rat droppings. Who did they think they were? Whatever Bertie told them.

The older menschen could tell some tales. Cohen the milliner could remember when the skeleton woman and her boy had come from Ireland. Colleen was her name, probably not even twenty when she’d fetched up on Fashion Street, stinking and almost naked. The first of the Irish from the dead potato fields. Many had followed but none with a child in tow the like of Bertie Burke.

Right from the start the child had worked like a man. Eight? Ten? God alone knew how old he’d been, but he’d done anything, everything. Mainly he’d put flesh on the bones of his mother.

Had Bertie Burke ever had a father? No one, not even the old knew that. But Colleen had married. O’Rourke, the Paddies’ own pawnbroker and father of the four shining girls who took his red hair but not his name. Bertie Burke wouldn’t have it. What he did do was add O’Rourke’s business to his own when the old man died. Now he was king of the pawnshop, of moneylending and was the best fence in the East End of London. He was also emperor of the women in his house and everyone knew it and that included Shmuel Kominsky.

‘Dolores, will you come along now.’

Dolores was the dreamiest of the Burke sisters. And even though Bertie knew that Shmuel Kominsky wouldn’t dare give his sister the sack – not with his brother Hymen in Bertie’s debt – he felt he had to call her out on it whenever she slipped into another world.

‘Ah, Bertie, there’s such a pretty girl up there looking right at you.’

He knew.

He saw Assumpta glance at her sister with something he interpreted as wonder. She was the youngest and yet she knew more than any of her sisters. She knew where they were and what it meant. Flower and Dean Street was the most insanitary thoroughfare in London. Full of low boarding houses, thieves, whores and buyers of Bertie’s considerable expertise. Up from this pit of filth and stink they’d drag themselves to seek him out with whatever they could pinch, whatever he deigned to give them a few coppers for.

‘Assumpta, stop looking.’

If any of his sisters became a low woman it would be that one. Bertie saw how she looked at the young men with the hungry eyes who followed the Burke sisters’ every move. Wouldn’t they like the chance of a fine young virgin on their arm?

He shook her by the shoulder. ‘Behave yourself! You want the Ripper to see you looking at men? You know what he does to bad women.’

‘But I’m not a bad—’

‘Be quiet now!’

He put a finger up to her soft lips. Full and pink. He pulled his hand away.

‘This Ripper sees what he wants to see,’ he said. ‘It’s why I come to collect you all from work every day. Unescorted ladies or ladies who look at men are what he likes.’

‘And ladies who drink.’

‘Yes and that too, Assumpta.’

‘Well, we don’t drink.’

‘No. No, you don’t.’

They walked on to Brick Lane. An old Jewess dressed in rags, her feet bare, shoved a basket of that bread the Jews like into his face. ‘Bagel?’

He pushed it away. The dirt was so ingrained in her flesh he knew it would never come out however much she washed. His hadn’t.

The milkman crossed the road with one of his cows. A Welshman, he spoke little and owed no one and was one of the few people Bertie respected. They nodded to each other, one businessman to another. If the milkman were not a Protestant, he could marry one of the sisters. But he was.

Fournier Street came into view through the gloom. They passed a butcher’s shop and Bertie kicked a nameless lump of something out of his way. On this corner, opposite the Jews’ synagogue, the road became a quagmire of human excrement, mud and animal hide. Shoeless children clutched the bits of cloth they called clothes to their skinny chests and looked at the Burkes with hungry eyes. Bertie knew what they were thinking. Bog-trotting Irish scum!

But he and his sisters were the ones with shoes. Bertie smiled.

‘Mammy?’

The woman in the bed opened her eyes.

‘Are my girls in?’ she asked.

‘They are.’

Bertie sat down. Neither he nor his mother made much of a dent on the soft mattress Mr O’Rourke had bought the sad, beautiful Colleen Burke when he married her. For the second time in her life, Colleen was wasting away. But this time there was no work Bertie could do to make it right. She coughed. He resisted putting a hand on her shoulder. He was her son. She had daughters for the sympathy.

‘I will need to go out tonight,’ he said. ‘Can I get you anything?’

The coughing subsided. She shook her head. She wasn’t an old woman. At most only fourteen years older than her son. But that made her sixty-one, which was ancient for a woman who had lost her soul in the rotting potato fields of County Clare.

‘No.’

What she’d wanted was long gone. Her traveller boy lover to help her rear their baby and then, later, some food would have done. But it hadn’t come. Not for a long time. And then her child had stolen it for her and she’d been so happy. But it had tasted like ashes. Always and forever like dust. Now it was nothing, she couldn’t even think about it.

‘Be careful of the Ripper,’ Colleen said.

‘Mammy he only rips bad women,’ Bertie said. ‘Not businessmen about their legitimate work.’

She looked into his eyes. ‘You know what I mean, Bertie.’

He looked away.

To have a drink in his hands with the Irishman due wouldn’t be a good idea. Arthur owed the bastard money and if he saw him spending what he was supposed not to have on gin, he’d have his liver. A Scotsman once told him that when the Irish were dying in the hungry forties they ate human flesh.

The door behind him opened and Arthur Manning shivered. Even over the sound of the whores laughing and the costers shouting, he knew the gentle tapping fall of those tiny Irish feet.

‘Mr Manning.’

He looked up.

‘Not drinking?’

‘How can I?’ Arthur said. He took his hat off and stuffed it in his pocket. ‘I am financially embarrassed, sir.’

‘Are you indeed?’

‘I am.’

Bertie Burke sat down. Arthur knew that he was sweating but he couldn’t help it. Why had he borrowed money from Burke? He was a moneylender yes, but also a fence. He worked with criminals. He was a criminal. But then who else but a criminal would lend money to someone like Arthur Manning?

‘So if you’re financially embarrassed what are we to do about your sovereign?’ the Irishman asked.

Burke was not a fighting man. He rarely used his fists, which were, in all truth, puny. But he was quicksilver with a blade. And everyone knew it. Some more immediately than others.

‘I will get it to you, Mr Burke.’

‘And how might you do that?’ He leaned forwards across the table. ‘Will you be selling the wife?’

‘No, I . . .’

‘Or maybe you’ll be after not sniffing around the whores on Millers Court any more.’

Arthur felt his face flush.

‘Ah, you know I have eyes and ears everywhere. Don’t try to hide yourself or your vices from me.’

‘I . . .’

‘Mr Manning I have a reputation to uphold here. If I let my guard down, or make exceptions for people, I will have my advantage taken from me and I don’t want that.’

‘No.’

‘Not with my elderly mother and my four maiden sisters to consider.’

‘No.’ He was shaking as well as sweating now. In a minute, if he wasn’t careful, he’d piss himself.

‘So reparation will have to be made. And it’ll have to be seen to have been made.’

‘I’ll get it for you tomorrow. I swear, I will!’

The blade Burke took out of his pocket was thin, shiny and pointed at one end.

‘Put your right hand on the table, Mr Manning.’

It was said so calmly. It was also said in what had now become silence. It wasn’t often possible to hear a pin drop in an East End pub. But when Bertie Burke had a blade out, everyone looked and listened or they got the hell away.

‘Put your hand on the table, Mr Manning.’

He knew what was coming, he’d seen Burke do it before. He knew it wouldn’t kill him. But Arthur shook. And when he finally managed to put his hand down in front of the Irishman, he was ashamed that his flesh trembled.

Men and women leaned across each other so they could see. How many of them owed Burke money? Most. And if they didn’t they were inconvenienced by him in some other way. Shmuel Kominsky employed his sisters, who were good at their jobs but who Burke took out of the Jew’s sweatshop whenever he felt like it. Burke knew everyone’s fears and weaknesses. That, above fencing, pawnbroking and moneylending, was his real skill.

Arthur wanted to be defiant. Oddly he didn’t want to look away from what Burke was about to do. Was that enough? When the silence became too much he said, ‘God Almighty, Mr Burke, I can feel you see my very soul! I’d be willing to bet you even know who the Ripper is, don’t you?’

The stab was so quick, in the skin between the thumb and forefinger, for a second, Arthur felt nothing. But as soon as Burke pulled the blade out it bled hard and fast. And it hurt. Arthur jumped up as if scalded and tucked his hand underneath his left armpit. As he ran towards the street door, he heard Burke say, ‘Tomorrow, Mr Manning, or you’ll not be so lucky next time.’

*   *   *

The Ten Bells was not Burke’s local. He didn’t have one. He knew that as an Irishman people expected him to drink. His stepfather, O’Rourke, had drunk himself to death. But Burke favoured control. He always had.

Once Arthur Manning had left, Burke made his exit. Behind him, he heard conversations, songs and swearing as the Ten Bells went back to normal in his absence.

Burke had imagined that his victim would have scuttled away after his spiking. But he was lying against the pub wall, a woman in his arms tying a rag around his hand. Manning panted.

‘Good night to you, Mr Manning,’ Burke said. His blade, now back in his poacher’s pocket had given way to the cane he always kept up the sleeve of his coat.

‘Mr Burke.’

The woman looked up. Hatless and plump, she was brazen even by local standards. And she smiled at him. She had to know the name, if not the face. And he knew her. One of the Millers Court tarts that Arthur Manning so favoured, her name was Mary Jane Kelly.

Would Manning be stupid enough to have the whore when he was out of cash and in hock? Probably. Burke walked away knowing that Mary Jane’s smile was boring into his back. It was said she was an ambitious girl. Maybe too much so.

9 November 1888

‘Oh, Holy Mary, he’s struck again!’

A boy in the street had shouted it. Barefoot, running through the shit and the mist, he’d looked into Dolores Burke’s face when she’d opened her bedroom window to see what all the fuss was about.

‘Ripper’s done another one!’ he’d said.

She’d put a hand to her mouth before she’d burst out to her sisters.

Dolores cried. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t work any more,’ she said. ‘If the streets are so dangerous now!’

Assumpta shook her head. ‘For whores. Not for us.’

‘And sure Bertie comes to fetch us every day from work,’ Mary said.

‘And if I can’t come one time?’

He stood in the doorway to their chamber, immaculate as he always was in his coal-black suit and silk top hat. But he was pale. So pale he could’ve been ill.

Assumpta took his arm. Even though he was her brother, she was a little in love with her handsome Bertie. ‘Ah, but you always come,’ she said. ‘You’re the best brother a girl could ever have.’

He smiled. Then he patted her hand once before he pulled away. ‘That’s grand of you to say so,’ he said, ‘but If I were ever held up and anything happened to you I’d never forgive myself.’

‘Oh.’ Mary began to cry.

‘And I earn enough for all of us,’ Bertie said. ‘Business is good, you don’t have to work, none of yous.’

Bertie was aware that someone was behind him but he didn’t turn around to look. He knew who it was.

‘But I like to work,’ Assumpta said. ‘I’ve made friends at Mr Kominsky’s workshop.’

‘Mr Kominsky is a crook and a bounder, who pays poorly.’

‘Then why did you let us work for him in the first place?’ Assumpta said.

Dolores, more timid than her sister said, ‘It’s best not to question . . .’

‘No, I want to know!’ Assumpta said. ‘Bertie?’

Dolores and, to a lesser extent, Mary and Concepta too, held their breath. Bertie was the kindest, gentlest brother any girl could have but he didn’t like to be interrogated. Not by anyone.

‘Because I wanted to make you happy,’ he said. ‘Because good girls should be able to do what they want in life.’

It had been Mary who had started it. She’d been to school with a girl called Ruth Katz, who had been given a job by her uncle, Shmuel Kominsky. She’d begged Mary to come with her and Mary in turn had begged her brother. Bertie had, to his way of thinking, caved in. Then the other girls had followed. Then the Ripper had come . . .

‘Bertie, I need a word.’

He turned to see his mother leaning on the arm of Rosie, the kitchen maid. ‘Mammy, you should be in bed!’

‘With women torn to pieces almost on my doorstep?’ Colleen shook her once-red curls. ‘I think not.’

And Bertie looked into her eyes and what he saw there frightened him. He avoided her gaze as he moved in her direction.

‘Yes, Mammy.’

She sat in the chair beside her bed. Lying down was too uncomfortable. It made her feel as if she had a weight on her chest.

Rosie gave her a cup of cocoa and left.

‘Bertie . . .’

He shut the door behind him and took a chair for himself opposite his mother.

‘You didn’t get home until dawn,’ she said. ‘And don’t deny it. I sleep rarely these days. I know. What were you doing?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘I do.’

He sighed. Did she know? Was it worth lying? Ah, but it was his way . . . ‘I was chasing a debt,’ he said. ‘A man who’d rather spend money on whores than pay his dues.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what did you do to this man when you caught up with him?’

‘I watched him.’

‘With a whore?’

Bertie said nothing.

‘Or did you spike him before he could get his long johns down?’ Colleen shook her head. ‘I know what you do to get money out of people. And in the old days when we first came here, what could I say about what you did? Bertie, don’t misunderstand me, I’ve always seen the violence in you and of course I’ve known why it’s there. I put it there, may God forgive me. But then this is not about a debt, is it?’

He took one of her hands. ‘You did what you did to save our lives, Mammy.’

‘Did I?’

‘You know you did!’ He leaned in close so that he could whisper. ‘What would your mother have done if you hadn’t . . .’

She put a hand up to stop him.

Bertie sat back again. ‘We would have been dead, Mammy, and you know it.’

There was a pause, then she said, ‘But maybe that would have been better.’

‘What?’

‘This is all unnatural, Bertie, and you know it!’

‘What’s all unnatural, Mammy? What?’

She looked at him and then she said, ‘You.’

He couldn’t speak. His face went white.

‘Because I may be dying but I am no fool,’ his mother said. ‘I know you’ve been out of this house every night upon which these women have been torn to pieces. And I know you, Albert Burke. I know what you really are. You’ve not forgotten, have you? Of course you haven’t. That’s why this is happening, isn’t it?’

Bertie took his jacket off and laid it on his mother’s bed.

She said, ‘Your granny made me have you in the cow’s barn. She told me if you were a girl I was to drown you in the ocean. Girls had no value except as sex for the English. She made us live in that cow barn until all the people she feared would laugh at a gypsy’s bastard had become corpses. Then she died. We dug her grave. Do you remember?’

Bertie removed his boots. He didn’t dare think.

‘You do, I know,’ Colleen said. ‘I also know that what you’re doing now is in place of words you cannot say. I’m aware I deserve it. But what was I to do?’

He unbuttoned his waistcoat.

‘There are people like you all over Ireland. It’s how many survived. If the potatoes hadn’t rotted in the earth you would’ve gone to work for an English landlord and you would’ve had a job and a life.’

‘Like the one I have here?’ He threw his waistcoat on the floor.

‘Ah, Bertie . . .’

‘I’ll pick it up later.’

‘What’s that?’

There was a patch, a stain of dark red on the front of his shirt.

He began to unfasten the buttons.

‘Women have always made passes at me.’

‘You look like your father,’ Colleen said. ‘Like a prince of Arabia.’

‘An ageing prince of Arabia,’ he said. ‘You know these women, Mammy? The ones who try to pull me into doorways, lift their skirts and puff their ancient alcoholic breath in my face? These days they are old whores.’

‘Rosie told me the woman who died last night was a girl . . .’

‘Young but gin soaked, riddled with the pox. Makes you realise that life has passed and you’ve never been touched as you should.’

He threw the shirt to the floor and then the vest beneath it and stood before his mother, bare-chested.

The once-fine breasts, the two of them, squashed and flattened with rags for so many years, hung flat against prominent ribs, their nipples almost touching the waistband of Bertie’s trousers.

Colleen’s eyes filled with tears. She hadn’t seen Bertie unclothed for over twenty years.

‘Who would touch this, Mammy? And I mean a man because it is men that are my preference.’

‘You are a girl. Still.’ Looking made her wince. Then she saw the oozing blood.

Bertie, following her eyes, said, ‘She stabbed me.’

‘The girl . . .’

‘Mary Kelly. Young, as you say. She fought. Turned my own blade against me, the bitch.’

‘You must get a doctor to your wound.’

‘No.’ Bertie sat on Colleen’s bed. ‘It’ll heal. And, if it doesn’t, it’s the end anyway. Isn’t that why you called me to you? So it could end?’

Bertie’s head drooped. ‘And when you hear the details of her death, you’ll not want me for your child, Mammy. She beckoned me in after servicing a man who owes me money. She told me she’d always wanted me. I knew that. I’d seen the way she looked at me. You think part of me doesn’t want to be a real man? I’m nothing as I am! But I’m not a man and I want to be loved as a woman. Days come when I want to cut every cunt out of every woman in this world. The dirty whores! But I want what they have too and the fact I’ll never have it makes me a madman.’

Colleen leaned forward and stroked Bertie’s face. ‘I did you such a wrong,’ she said. ‘But there was always an excuse for it. First your granny, then, as you grew, so you’d get work, so the English landlords wouldn’t get you in the family way. Then we came here and I should’ve stopped it . . .’

Bertie kissed her. ‘Mammy, we were all but dead when we came here. What would I have done as a girl? I would’ve gone on the streets like Kelly and Eddowes and Stride. I would’ve ended up an old whore. I’d be dead of the pox by now. As it was, I worked as a man and got respect as a man and it’s not your fault that the price was so high for me.’

‘And you saved me from the streets, my lovely child.’

Bertie looked away.

‘And now it’s made you this,’ Colleen said. ‘You have to stop, Bertie. Now.’

‘I know. But, Mammy, there’s only one way to do that,’ Bertie said. ‘And I fear for you and the girls. I make good money.’

‘And you think that your sisters can’t run a pawnshop? You think that just the name of Bertie Burke won’t protect them? You underestimate what you’ve done. Those girls are bright and sharp and without you they will have to be their own protection. And the Ripper will be gone then, won’t he?’

Bertie began to dress. ‘When the girls have gone to work, I’ll go.’

Colleen nodded. ‘You may have anything in my wardrobe that will fit you. And you must take some money.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’ She grabbed his arm. ‘You’ll need money as a woman alone. I know. God Almighty, Bertie, if you hadn’t done these terrible things, do you think I’d ever let you go? I love you. You are my beloved child! This consumption that will kill me soon will be a blessing when you have gone. I don’t want to live without you in my life!’

She cried.

Bertie circled her with the arms of a man for the last time and said, ‘Then we will both welcome death, Mammy, because then I will see you again.’

Bertie Burke left Colleen’s room, never to return.

2 February 2015

The above represents a fictional account of the story that was told to my grandmother, Eunice, by her mother Dolores Burke. Too upset to go to work on the 9 November 1888, Dolores was in the house when Bertie Burke left and she witnessed her mother’s consequent distress. Colleen Burke only ever told Dolores the truth about Bertie and, as far as I know, she never, ever passed that knowledge on to any living soul except my grandmother. Whether it’s true or not is another matter. What is known is that after Bertie Burke left Spitalfields, the Ripper murders stopped.

Forcing girls into men’s clothes so they could work for better wages was common in Ireland in the nineteenth century and so there were lots of ‘Berties’ at one time. Where my Great-great-uncle Bertie went and whether he ever wore his mother’s clothes and found love with a man isn’t known. I like to think that he did. There is a story about a skinny little Irish woman, handy with a blade by all accounts, who ran a moneylending operation in Southwark in the 1890s. Known only by the name Clare she never had a man and, by all accounts, spent any time away from her business in church. Bertie had been born in County Clare. And, although the family was never religious, did he finally atone for his crimes in the arms of the Church? Or was he praying for death so he could be reunited with his mother?

It will never be known now. But then will the identity of the real Ripper ever come to light? Could all of the above just be a family fairy tale told to further demonise the oppressors of ‘fallen’ women and the evils of the British Empire? I can only leave you with questions, reader. Because they are all that I have.

Bernadette Mary Elizabeth Chisholm(known by her mates as ‘Bertie’).

 

Yes, he felt uncomfortable about the ethics of what he did. After all, it was the misery and terror of real people he was exploiting. They truly had lived once upon a grimy time, had endured the appalling violence and died in loneliness and agony. And now he was here to benefit from the gory tragedies, to make a vocation from being a ghoul. But no one thought him vile. It was a respectable thing to do, helping to keep history alive.

He told himself this again and again but it didn’t make him feel better. He was naturally too pensive, he decided, and really he ought to learn to grin wider with his mouth and smile with his eyes at the same time. So he attempted these minor contortions with his reflection but something was always wrong with the mirrors in his house, for they all just showed the same dour figure as before and none of the cheerfulness came back at him.

The crucial factor, he knew, was the separation in time between the crime and its utility as heritage. The more years in this respect, the less parasitical the process, the more morally acceptable it was.

But the results would inevitably be less accurate.

True, he was getting better and better at his job and really ought to take at least some comfort and pride from this fact. He remembered how he had started out, not exactly nervous but awkward and perhaps a little feverish, his mind full of interesting facts but a constriction in his throat that made his voice hoarse. It was always going to be difficult to jump into the deep end of this profession, to be instantly suave and capable and efficient.

His very first day he had been with mentors, two of them, who were there to support him, but he felt the pressure of their scrutiny as a negative force. On the corner of Brick Lane and Wentworth Street, he had taken a deep breath and regaled his audience with the details of the murder that had taken place here and how the victim was subjected to an assault involving a blunt instrument tearing her perineum. “Like this and that, my friends.”

Gestures came only a little more easily to him than the words did, but the mentors seemed satisfied. They nodded approvingly and, when the description was done, they continued strolling along together. Later, back in his too-narrow dwelling, he went through his act again and dismay filled him that it all flowed more smoothly and amusingly now he was alone. “But few authorities believe that she was actually a victim of the Ripper . . .”

His mentors he would never see again. He had no clear i