Saucy Jacky

Two – Poor Emma Smith

Two – Poor Emma SmithThe moment with which I started this tale, the moment when I initially stabbed the first dirty w***e, that was early in the morning of 7 August, 1888. I'll return to that, and tell it proper, soon. But first… As I think of it, and if I want to tell the full story true, it really began four months earlier in the spring of that year. Yes, of course!

And, yes, I could go back further still. If you do crime, or commit murder, or what have you, it all probably started earlier. I could blame my drunk mother, or my filthy auntie, or the upbringing the pair of them afforded me, or the monarchy, or my finances, or what have you. But chuck that. I don't give a damn about that and won't waste time telling it. I am what I am, however it was that I came to be. But the story I'm telling here, the story of my summer and autumn of glory, actually began in April of 1888, the morning following Easter Sunday.

I hadn't been feeling right for some while. It's difficult to explain exactly what I mean by that. I wasn't potty, don't think that. I wasn't hearing voices or anything of the sort. But I was plagued by my strong sense of responsibility. A fellow ought not come into this world and thereafter simply take. He needs to give as well. My eyes could see, my mind could consider that which I saw, my conscience spoke to me of duties owed my fellow human beings, my city, and my world. I didn't care about them, don't get me wrong. I'm not some compassionate bleeding heart. I'm not talking about feelings at all. I'm talking about duty and responsibility. Things were not right and, owing to that, there were steps needed taking. It was my duty to make the world a better place.

The first of those steps was to find work which allowed me to do right, to help mankind. I was already well-down that road. For several years I'd been volunteering my time at London Hospital, a charity concern towering over Whitechapel Road in the East End. Know this, the posh, the well-off, the titled upper classes did not go to hospitals; when ill or injured, they summoned their private doctors, who went to them. Hospitals were for the working classes. And the lowest classes. The poorest of the poor came to hospital for treatment when in the midst of an emergency or when the work house casualty wards couldn't or wouldn't deal with them.

Some might look upon volunteer work as lowly, but I never saw it that way. In fact, I was proud of my position for the opportunities it provided. I needed no medical knowledge at all to accomplish my tasks; moving patients, tending to their physical needs, bringing them food, taking away their waste, answering the commands of doctor and nurse alike. And, as I imagined might happen, when the tasks got nastier, and the willing volunteers thinned out, the work became real employment for those loyal few of us. The doctors were paid, most of the nurses were paid and, from that time on, as an official orderly, I was paid.

Carrying bed pans was no longer one of my routine activities. Instead, I was preparing the surgical theatres, shunting patients to and from their operations, cremating diseased and amputated organs and limbs, and shunting corpses to and from the pathology annex, eh, the mortuary. I was not only more important than the meager volunteers on the floors above. I was necessary. Without me, there would have been no order. The filth would have, quite literally, overrun the place.

They counted on me to eliminate the filth.

There were benefits far beyond the contents of my weekly pay packet. Each assignment provided an avenue to knowledge; offering a man with a keen eye, and a keener mind, the opportunity to learn and to gain much. The sights I saw at hospital, the diverse education I received, and the pay put me above those around me and freed me, financially and spiritually, for other pursuits.

The seed of my purpose had been planted.

I was in my exalted position that morning, attending to patients in the foul ward, beds dedicated to the women the government called the Unfortunates. Those who, not appreciating their alternatives, took to a life of prostitution. Unfortunates; I found that generous and forgiving. The police called them bang-tails. I thought that frivolous, a fun reference to a filthy work. They were whores, why decorate it? Entire streets in the slums of London were inhabited by whores, guzzling cheap alcohol between bouts of spreading disease. Every working night I passed among the dirty bitches. The worst cases were shipped off to separate 'Lock Hospitals' to be caged like animals. But the law wouldn't allow their eternal confinement. When their acute phases passed, the whores were discharged back to the streets to infect new customers. There was no cure for syphilis; no end to the suffering for their unsuspecting prey but insanity and death.

Forgive me… I go off on tangents.

I was hauling waste from the foul ward early that Monday morning, 3 April, when a middle-aged woman of the street was helped into hospital by friends of hers. I was summoned to the Emergency Room to give them a hand with her. She was called Emma Smith. She'd been attacked that morning, assaulted and robbed in the dark, she claimed, by a gang of three men. They'd grabbed her, beat her, and stole whatever items of value she carried. Then, if what she claimed was true, in what amounted to a grand finale, the trio had knocked her to the ground, pulled her legs apart, and savagely inserted some blunt object – a stick or like instrument – up inside of her.

She survived the attack, 'by some miracle' her friends claimed, and made it back to her lodgings. There she informed them of all the juicy sordid details. Soon thereafter, they hurried her to hospital. As I said, I was summoned to assist upon her arrival. I did not recognize it as such at the time but, with the registration of Emma Smith, destiny had altered my life.

The seed of my purpose took root.

Being the acute care orderly on duty, I personally had a hand in undressing her. Her laboured breath stank of beer, made the air heavy and turned my stomach. I would have abandoned the room and left my work undone had it not been for her groans. The girl was in incredible pain. I cannot explain why, but I found her cries to be a balm to my irritated spirit. Her pain soothed me. The sickness in my stomach left. I found my mood lightening as I washed her filthy bits. I was positively cheery as I wheeled her into the surgery theatre and readied her for the knife.

The nurses and Dr Haslip, the house surgeon, took over. No longer needed, I slipped quietly out of theatre. And, even more quietly, I slipped in and stood to the side in the otherwise empty surgical students' gallery above… to see what I could see.

What I saw was the nurses peeling back the sheets to expose her injured nether region. They bent her knees and spread her pale white legs. As I suspected, washing her had been a waste. The filth could not be washed clean. The whole of her… lower area was thick and red with fresh blood.

They covered her mouth and nose with cotton and dripped laudanum onto it. The girl selfishly disappeared into a dreamy oblivion, depriving me of the pleasure of her cries.

I saw the doctor climb between her splayed legs and go to work. While she cooed and lolled her head, he inserted clean white bandages, touched and tamped away, then removed blood-covered rags. He examined and probed the depths of her injuries, he stitched and packed as best he was able; all to the tune of her drifting moans. It was altogether thrilling. And revolting beyond description. And saddening – without being sad. And engaging. And enraging.

When the surgery ended, I caught my breath. I drew a handkerchief and wiped a considerable sweat from my brow. Then I got myself back together. I hurried below, returned to the theatre, and made short work of transporting the woman to her bed in the post-operative ward.

But, as I had determined early on, the effort of everybody involved had been wasted. Emma Smith fell into a coma and died from her injuries the next morning. It was a horrible shame.

I admit, I held it against her. Had she died immediately, it would have been my duty to remove her to the hospital mortuary. There, in the cold solitude, I might have had a few minutes with her. As it was, some other orderly had the pleasure. A horrible shame indeed.

Let me state up front, categorically, I had nothing whatever to do with the attack upon Emma Smith or the death that resulted. Again, I was working. But, I confess, the event affected me more than I ever imagined it might. Further, I honestly believe and therefore state, her accidental murder altered forever the course of my thoughts. Not my feelings, perhaps, but most assuredly my thoughts. I cannot express the disturbance that welled within my being upon my discovery, by way of the morning papers, she had died; the violent thoughts that sprang to life and had, since that day, more and more frequently occurred to me. Not only thoughts but violent stirrings I had never known.

All because of that woman of the streets. That w***e.

Emma Smith troubled me, visited me in my dreams, tormented me. More so the knowledge the streets were full of the likes of her; boozing, whoring Emma Smiths, drunk as a lord, drunk as my mother, filthy as my auntie, ruining good men all around them. They were bringing down the whole of society. Something, my conscience told me, something had to be done. I saw it then, my responsibility to the community.

For months I agonized over those concerns. Yet, as troubled as I was, I continued to do my bit for the people of the East End. I continued my important work in hospital. As I stated earlier, I had much to gain from my profession, a sense of worth, an understanding of right, the medical knowledge necessary to take on the new job my conscience insisted upon. All gain.

Now, four months later, early morning of 7 August, as I left the hospital, I quietly and unobtrusively gained a surgical knife with a fine and shining steel blade. It had been inappropriately left out and I covertly picked it up and slipped it into my coat as I headed for the door.