The Hellgate

Chapter 13

Late the following morning, after carrying up my coffee, Mrs Griggs read to me from her papers (from the previous evening) of the Coroner"s Inquest into the death of the George Yard murder victim. George Collier, Deputy Coroner for the South-Eastern Division of Middlesex, presiding (in place of the vacationing coroner, Wynne Baxter; on holiday in Scandinavia), convened the meeting at the Working Lads" Institute in Whitechapel Road. Detective Inspector Reid, "aitch Division, appeared on behalf of the CID. A lot of blah, blah, blah followed, through which I tried to look interested for the sake of my good landlady. I"ll mention a few bits.

blah, blah, blahOf the witnesses, Elizabeth Mahoney, who lived with her husband at No 47 George Yard (the respectable woman I spied unawares), assisted the jury in establishing Time of death by what she had not seen; neither body nor murderer at 1:50 am when she returned with provisions from a chandler"s shop in Thrawl Street. Alfred Crow, a cab-driver lodged in No 35, confessed to stepping around a body (he should have said the body) on the stoop at 3:30. Vagrants on the doorstep, he explained, were nothing new. John Reeves, a waterside labourer living in No 37, rediscovered the corpse at 4:45 and, rather than ignore it, notified the authorities. Peeler Barrett, of the soldier c**k-up, also testified (probably with a red face).

Time of deaththeMrs Griggs, in reading, mentioned something about an off-handed comparison having been made to Emma Smith. By whom (acting coroner, jurist, witness, or reporter?), I didn"t know. I didn"t want to know. I didn"t like thinking about Emma Smith.

Dr Killeen, who"d examined the corpse, saw no evidence of a struggle or s****l i*********e. He confirmed death occurred due to hemorrhage and loss of blood. My landlady was breathless, appalled. Poor thing. “They don"t even know the victim"s name!”

Funny, until that instant, the question of the woman"s name had never even occurred to me. I had comfortably fallen into thinking of her as "the soldier"s w***e".

Unfortunates, it seemed, had a habit of using aliases on the streets. The corpse had, so far, been identified by three separate witnesses (all of the lower or working classes), each by a different name. One called her Emma. Another, Martha Turner. Another, Martha Tabram. Her true identity, the paper reported, remained a mystery. Collier adjourned the inquiry until Thursday, 23 August, to allow the police time to make a positive identification and to gather further evidence.

If the men of the Metropolitan Police found any further evidence, I had yet to hear of it. Nearly a week passed without any news at all. Nothing in the papers. Nothing from the streets. Outside of several abysmal recipes and a report on the most recent medical problems of her hypochondriac mother, nothing from the talkative Miss Adler in regards to police activities. Nothing until the afternoon of 14 August, when…

“They"ll get him now!”

That was the shout that issued from my excited landlady. Of course, it brought me from my room. Anything to make that upright woman act so undignified would have brought me out. I looked down the second floor stairs, to see Mrs Griggs looking up from below. Yes, she was holding a newspaper. “I"m sorry, Mrs Griggs?”

“I said, They"ll get him now. The murderer! It says here…”

She opened her newspaper and, from below, projecting in her most serious Dress Reformist"s voice, proclaimed the details.

“Seventy locals, working men and students, recently met at Tonybee Hall. They appointed a committee of twelve, the St Jude"s Vigilance Committee, to organize patrols. They will, between the hours of eleven at night and one in the morning, take turns to assist the police in watching certain at risk streets throughout Whitechapel. They will meet once a week to report their activities and reassess their security measures.” She lowered the paper, staring up for my reaction.

at risk“That"s… interesting news,” was the best I could manage. A rant, I imagined, concerning Nosy Parker vigilantes getting in my way might have been met with suspicion. As it turned out, my response was of no consequence.

Mrs Griggs had turned the page and moved on. “She"s been identified!”

“I"m sorry?”

“The poor murder victim. She"s been identified.” With that, Mrs Griggs was reading again. “After reading of the victim, referred to in a 13 August news report by three names, Emma, Martha Tabram, and Martha Turner, Henry Tabram, a foreman packer at a furniture warehouse, visited the mortuary on 14 August…” Blah, blah, blah. She read on.

Blah, blah, blah.The point, which both the article and Mrs Griggs took too long to reach, was that this furniture packer packed himself down to the shed that passed for a morgue in Whitechapel. There, he formally identified the corpse of the George Yard victim as having once contained the essence of his wife, Martha Tabram, age 39 (from whom he"d been separated for thirteen years).

“Sad,” Mrs Griggs editorialized.

“Oh, eh, yes,” I agreed.

“You know,” Mrs Griggs went on, “the East London Observer, I believe it was, featured a full two columns. They called George Yard a murder as unique and mysterious as any in memory.”

“Did they?” I allowed my wonder to show, while doing my best to suppress my pride.

Mrs Griggs folded her paper and returned to her sitting room.

I returned to my rooms, beaming. That"s why I liked my landlady; one of the very few women in whose wake I was able to experience a feeling of calm. Despite having delivered bad news regarding the busybody street vigilantes, she"d found a way to cheer me by complimenting my work.