Read Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 for Free Online Page A

attended by Dr George Haslip
and she told him in more detail what had happened to her. She had been walking by the church of St Mary Matfelon on the Whitechapel Road at about 1.30 a.m. and, seeing a small group of men ahead,
had crossed the road to avoid them, probably because they appeared unruly or threatening. Unfortunately, they followed her up Osborn Street, a reasonably spacious thoroughfare that segued into
Brick Lane. They attacked her outside the factory. Dr Haslip’sexamination revealed the horrific extent of Emma’s injury to the lower abdomen: a hard instrument,
probably a stick, had been thrust into her vagina with such force that it had ruptured the perineum.
    Emma’s condition worsened, and she eventually lapsed into unconsciousness. There was little the hospital could do and at 9 a.m. the following morning, 4 April, she died, the cause of death
being peritonitis, a direct result of that brutal injury.
    Three days later, a coroner’s inquest was convened, the purpose of the proceedings being to find the cause of death (rather than the identity of the perpetrator). It was here that the last
hours of Emma Smith were brought to light. On the evening prior to the attack, the Easter bank holiday Monday, she had left the George Street lodging house at about 6 p.m. which was not unusual,
for Emma was a woman of regular habits. At some point she had made her way to Poplar, near the docks, where she was seen on Burdett Road by fellow lodger Margaret Hayes, who was leaving the area
after being punched by a man in the street a short while before. It was 12.15 a.m. and Emma was apparently talking to a man of medium height, who was wearing a dark suit and white silk handkerchief
round his neck. The next time she was seen was when she arrived at the lodging house in distress. The inquest lasted a day and the coroner recorded a verdict of ‘wilful murder against some
person unknown’.
    The police were not informed of the attack on Emma until the day before the inquest, when there was little hope of finding the perpetrators – some reports suggest this was because Emma
herself asked for them not to be told. The official reports into what was obviously now a murder case have since gonemissing, but notes were taken from some of them prior to
their disappearance, notably by Detective Inspector Edmund Reid of the Metropolitan police’s H, or Stepney, Division.
    In his notes, Reid recorded some biographical details about Emma Smith; she apparently had a son and daughter living in the Finsbury Park area of north London. She had been lodging at 18 George
Street for about eighteen months and was in the habit of going out at around 6 p.m. every night, often returning to the dosshouse very drunk. Newspaper reports at the time stated that when drunk
she could sometimes behave like a ‘madwoman’ and on one occasion came home to the lodging house claiming to have been thrown out of a first-floor window. She often had cuts and bruises
from drunken brawls. Although these accounts reveal a belligerent and boisterous character, it is about as much as is known about Emma Smith, apart from the suggestion that she was a widow and that
more than likely she was a prostitute. Other women who knew her had the impression she had known better days. Inspector Reid noted that there was a touch of culture in her speech, unusual in her
class.
    Naturally, the death of Emma Smith was covered by the press, where it was described as the ‘horrible affair in Whitechapel’ and that Emma had been ‘barbarously murdered’.
In his summing up at the inquest, even coroner Wynne Baxter was moved to comment that, ‘It was impossible to imagine a more brutal and dastardly assault.’ However, Emma’s
attackers were never caught. Her story is a mysterious one, with a number of questions that remain unanswered. Why did it take her so long (about three hours) to travel the 300 yards from the scene
of her attack to her lodging house? Why