“Oh?” I couldn’t believe it. Thomas had won over my father just as he said he would. Clearly, this meant the end times were near. I hugged my father, still not quite believing my luck. “This is all wonderful, but… why?”
Father held me close. “I’ve tried in my own way to protect you from the harshness and diseases of the world. But men—and young women—weren’t meant to live in gilded cages. There’s always a chance some contagion will find a way in. I trust you to change that. In order to do so you must venture out into the world, my sweet girl. Promise me one thing, will you?”
“Anything, Father.”
“Always foster and grow that unquenchable curiosity of yours.”
I smiled. That was a promise I fully intended to keep.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
HISTORICAL AND CREATIVE LIBERTIES TAKEN
Newspapers first used the term Leather Apron in regard to Jack the Ripper on September 4, not on August 31, and they referred to suspect John Pizer by name on September 7. I adjusted these dates to better serve my purposes and removed Pizer’s name altogether to avoid muddling the plot with extraneous characters.
On September 10 there really was a vigilante committee that formed, called The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Using that idea, I involved Nathaniel and Thomas, giving them a solid reason to be trolling the streets in the nights following the crimes as part of the Knights of Whitechapel. I had them out and about on September 7 (the real-life evening before Annie Chapman’s body was discovered), however, which is another embellishment of the historical timeline as far as the vigilante group is concerned.
I also don’t mention that John Pizer was arrested on September 10 as “Leather Apron.” There were so many men arrested as suspects, I feared it wouldn’t add anything to the story line other than confusing readers with too many names and dead ends. Arrests were made of the following men in September alone:
John Pizer
Edward McKenna
Jacob Isenschmid (accused of being the Ripper and sentenced to the asylum)
Charles Ludwig (arrested after reportedly threatening two people with a knife)
Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols had no history of working for upper-class families in London that I could find while researching her background. I took the liberty of fictionalizing what her life could have been before she left her husband, becoming a prostitute and alcoholic and moving from workhouse to workhouse in the early 1880s. I wanted to show the human side of these women, not just the horrific crime scenes they were a part of at the end of their lives. They were wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters, not just forgotten prostitutes, remembered only in death.
Emma Elizabeth Smith was someone else I fictionalized greatly. There are conflicting theories of whether she was actually an early victim of Jack the Ripper, but I really wanted her included in this novel because I was fascinated by the vagueness of her life before she became a prostitute. While there are rumors of her coming from an elite background, there’s no concrete proof she was highborn. People who knew her claimed she spoke differently, meaning she had a firm grasp of proper language, which was rare for people living in the East End at that time. She said next to nothing about where she came from, which made me ask the all-important question, What if? What if she really was part of the aristocracy? There are reports that she may have known the perpetrators who had attacked her, giving me the spark of an idea to create a new background for her. The mystery surrounding her life and death was a blank canvas that I could really explore through my imagination.
Annie Chapman’s murder date and details of what she was wearing were as close to accurate as I could make them. She’d been drinking heavily and had used her rent money for alcohol. The lodging house deputy refused her board until she could pay, so she went out to earn some. Her husband had been paying her ten shillings a week, but that ended in 1886, when he passed away, not in 1888, the year of her death.
Elizabeth Stride is not mentioned by name in this novel, though she was one of the victims of the infamous double event.
Catherine Eddowes was the second victim in the double event. I kept the date she was buried and embellished the rest about Robert James Lees meeting Audrey Rose and Thomas at the grave. He offered his assistance to Scotland Yard at this time, so I reimagined it as him offering his assistance to Audrey Rose and Thomas instead.
Mary Jane Kelly was someone I tried keeping as historically accurate as possible. Some of Jack and Mary Jane Kelly’s conversation and descriptions of what she was wearing the night of her death are included in the novel, although I embellished the times and sequence of how they occurred a bit. She was heard singing “A Violet from Mother’s Grave” once she was already inside her apartment with the Ripper, not outside on the street. She was wearing a red shawl, according to one eyewitness.
The home on Miller Street wasn’t accessible by carriage during this time, but for the purpose of my story, I made it so, allowing Audrey Rose and Thomas a decent hiding spot for their midnight spying excursion.
Facsimiles of the “Dear Boss” letter and the “Saucy Jack” postcard were actually printed on October 4 (in the Evening Standard), not October 1. Earlier printings of the letters were text only (on October 1 and 3, in the Star and Daily News), not picture copies of the actual letters.
The Barnum & Bailey circus didn’t come to London’s Olympia until November 1889 (the fall following this story), but since the queen was a fan of it, and hundreds of Victorian circuses traveled across Europe during this time period, I decided to include it. Poor Jumbo the elephant also passed away in 1885 and wouldn’t have been entertaining the crowds.
Clairvoyant and spiritualist Robert James Lees was an actual man who offered his assistance to police on several occasions for the Jack the Ripper killings. While spiritualism was still quite popular across the United States and Europe (even after some spiritualists and mediums were proven to be frauds), Scotland Yard did not accept his assistance. It has never been confirmed, but there are rumors he also communicated with Prince Albert for Queen Victoria and had even resided in the palace.
I also tried keeping all medical terminology and practices as close to the date they were used as possible. Books using the term forensic medicine or forensic science were really printed in the 1800s. And doctors/medical examiners used things such as body temperature to determine time of death, though they were also aware that blood loss and cold temperatures would affect the accuracy of their estimates. Joseph Lister developed the idea to sterilize instruments during surgeries in the 1860s using carbolic acid, and fingerprint identification was discovered in the early 1880s. Though they didn’t have all the tools we have now, police scoured a crime scene and collected evidence much the same way in the nineteenth century as they do today.
As stated on the New York State Troopers website (under “Crime Laboratory System: Forensic Science History”), the following practices were applied during the 1800s:
In the 1800s the field of forensic science saw substantial progress. The decade saw:
The first recorded use of questioned document analysis.
The development of tests for the presence of blood in a forensic context.
A bullet comparison used to catch a murderer.
The first use of toxicology (arsenic detection) in a jury trial.
The development of the first crystal test for hemoglobin using hemin crystals.
The development of a presumptive test for blood.
The first use of photography for the identification of criminals and documentation of evidence and crime scenes.
The first recorded use of fingerprints to solve a crime.
The development of the first microscope with a comparison bridge.