Free Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sudgen Page B

the East London Railway, and the District Railway as far as Thomas Street’ but discovered neither weapon nor bloodstain. At eleven or twelve Spratling himself looked for clues in Buck’s Row and Brady Street but he, too, returned empty-handed. Later, with Sergeant Godley, he made a futile search of the Great Eastern Railway yard and of the premises of the East London and Metropolitan District Railways. Inspector Helson also examined the area. He discovered only one stain which ‘might have been blood’ in Brady Street. 10
    Extensive enquiries in the locality proved equally fruitless. No onein Buck’s Row seemed to have seen or heard the killer. Three residents who lived very close to the spot where the body had been found were Mrs Emma Green, a widow, and Mr and Mrs Purkis. Emma Green lived with her three children at New Cottage, Buck’s Row, adjoining and east of the stable gateway where Polly had lain, but no one in the house had heard anything untoward during the night. Mrs Green shared a front room on the first floor with her daughter and the first intimation that they had of the tragedy was Sergeant Kirby’s sharp knock on the street door about four in the morning. Walter Purkis, the manager of Essex Wharf, lived with his wife in a house that fronted on Buck’s Row, almost opposite the stable gateway. They occupied the front room on the second floor. His wife was awake most of the night; Purkis himself only slept fitfully and was awake between one and two. Yet, again, it was a policeman – this time PC Neil – who apprised them of the atrocity. Until then the street had been very quiet. And neither the keeper of the board school, immediately to the west of the stable yard, nor the watchmen at Browne & Eagle’s wool warehouse and Schneider’s cap factory, across the road, had heard anything suspicious.
    At the time of the murder there had been men at work in nearby Winthrop Street – three slaughtermen at Harrison, Barber & Co. Ltd and a watchman guarding a sewage works for the Whitechapel District Board of Works. None could shed the faintest light upon the mystery. Even those who had discovered Polly’s body, apparently within minutes of her death, could not contribute a crumb of information on the perpetrator of the crime. Cross had neither seen nor heard a person or vehicle leave the body. Paul had seen no one running away. And until he found Polly’s body PC Neil had seen and heard nothing suspicious. Yet his beat had never taken him far from Buck’s Row. ‘The farthest I had been that night was just through the Whitechapel Road and up Baker’s Row,’ he told the inquest.
    Polly may have died without a cry of any kind. The proximity of the railway, however, might explain why no one heard a scream. Inevitably, too, one questions the efficacy of the local watchmen. Patrick Mulshaw, the Board of Works watchman, may not have been the only slacker. He went on duty at about 4.45 p.m. on 30 August, watching some sewage works in Winthrop Street, at the back of the Working Lads’ Institute, and was relieved at about 5.55 the next morning. He saw no one between three and four and heard no cry for help but admitted at the inquest to having dozed at times duringthe night. ‘I suppose,’ asked the coroner, ‘[that] your watching is not up to much?’ ‘I don’t know,’ replied the old man truculently, ‘[but] it is thirteen long hours for 3s. and find your own coke.’ 11
    In the absence of genuine clues suspicion momentarily fell upon the three horse slaughterers who had been working at the yard of Harrison, Barber & Co. Ltd. in Winthrop Street on the night of the murder. These men had turned up in Buck’s Row at some time after four and had stood as onlookers while Dr Llewellyn examined the body. One of them, Henry Tomkins of 12 Coventry Street, Bethnal Green, spoke on 3 September at the inquest. He related how he and his mates, James Mumford and Charles Britton, had worked at the slaughterhouse from