Free The Real Mary Kelly by Wynne Weston-Davies Page B

subscription to house the working poor of London and the major cities of Britain in the 19th century. The apartments all shared semi-open communal staircases which served as convenient places for the destitute to sleep and for prostitutes to take their clients since the meagre gas lighting was extinguished at 11pm.
    Monday 6th August was a bank holiday and a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Mahoney – who had been out celebrating – had come in a little before 2am. They had not noticed anything on the stairs although, as Mrs. Mahoney pointed out, it was so dark that they might easily have missed seeing a body unless theyhad tripped over it. Alfred Crow, a cab driver, was the next witness. He had noticed a body lying on the staircase when he returned home at 3.30am but took no notice as he was used to seeing vagrants sleeping there. An hour and a quarter later John Reeves, a dock labourer, descended the stairs on his way to work. By that time it was light and he saw the body of a woman, her skirts pulled up over her head, lying in a pool of blood. He did not stop to look further but hurried off to find a policeman.
    Dr. Timothy Killeen, the police surgeon, arrived at the scene at 5.30am and his evidence was listened to in shocked silence by the small audience in the Alexandra Room. The woman, who Dr. Killeen estimated to be about 36 (she was actually 40) 59 , had been slaughtered by 39 separate stab wounds to the stomach, lower abdomen and chest. Following the post-mortem examination that he conducted later the same day, he ascertained that the abdominal wounds, several of which had pierced the stomach, liver and spleen, had all been inflicted by a sharp, short-bladed knife like a penknife but a large chest wound which had penetrated the sternum and just nicked the heart could only have been done with a strong, rigid instrument such as a sword bayonet or a dagger. The cause of death, he stated, was haemorrhage from the various stab wounds.
    The coroner listened gravely to Dr. Killeen’s evidence and then addressed the jury. Since there was doubt about the woman’s identity he was going to adjourn the inquest for a fortnight. He added that the man who could have inflicted 39 wounds on a poor defenceless woman must have been a perfect savage.
    When Francis left the Working Lads’ Institute that day an idea seems to have taken root in his mind. Before the inquest resumed on 23rd August he had visited a solicitor – exactly who is not known since he had dismissed Arthur Ivens in May of the previous year – sworn an affidavit and on Monday 20th, presented it in person to the High Court of Justice: Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, in the Strand. It sought leave to strike out Paragraph 5 of his petition and to make certain other alterations. Permission was duly granted by the Registrar, Mr. D.H. Owen, and the following day Francis returned to file the amended document and the supporting affidavit 60 .
    It was an extraordinary thing to do. The petition had in effect lain dormant since being filed in March two years before, as all attempts to serve it onElizabeth had failed because of her disappearance. Why had Francis suddenly gone to the trouble and the significant expense of swearing an affidavit and making radical changes to a document that he had probably not given much thought to for more than two years? To have gone to that degree of inconvenience and expense at any time would have been odd but for a hard-up newspaper man to have taken several days off right in the middle of the most sensational murder investigation of the time seems almost incomprehensible.
    The clue lies in Paragraph 5. It is the one in which he names Mrs. McLeod [sic] as the owner and proprietor of the various brothels in the Kings Cross and Holloway districts in which Elizabeth was alleged to have entertained her clients, including Harry MacBain [sic]. Why would Francis suddenly have decided to spare the reputation of a woman who he held