“No,” said Mrs. Snell heavily. “We’re all light sleepers, and yet no one heard a thing. And it must’ve happened not long before Johnny got up to go to the outhouse — my husband was out in the backyard around five, and he never noticed a thing out of the ordinary. I’m sure he would’ve seen the body lying by the wall if it had been there.”
According to Mrs. Snell, the backyard is often used by prostitutes to conduct their business. A lot of the backyards in the area are known sex-hangouts, places to give prostitutes and their clients some privacy, somewhere out of direct view from the coppers.
“We’ve had to shoo away many couples copulating in our yard,” Mrs. Snell said. “It’s not uncommon to come outside in the dead of night and find a man and woman involved in salacious acts. Sometimes the yard is used by drunks either too frightened or too full to go home for the night. So, they stumble into the nearest yard and curl up.”
Will she and her family be locking the yard door from now on?
“Heavens no,” Mrs. Snell huffed. “It’s a horrible thing that happened, but it wouldn’t be sensible to lock the door. Besides, who can afford a lock anyway? Still, I am sick of people coming by all the time and gawking into my yard; ghoulish folks eager to see the scene of the crime. And it’s not just kids, but adults, both men and women. They should know better.”
In the short time I’ve been in the Snell’s backyard, at least a dozen faces have either appeared over the fence, or people have entered the yard to catch sight of where the second crime was committed.
Having seen the body, does Mrs. Snell think the killer was that of the supernatural kind, or does she think merely some mad copycat?
“I don’t believe in ghosts, and what I saw that morning was most definitely real. I’m sure it was some crazy person either trying to recapture the glory of Jack the Ripper, or is doing it for a sick joke. All the talk in the papers of Deeming being the Ripper, and with his ghastly crimes and recent hanging — it’s enough to make anyone mad. It could be anyone; someone in the neighbourhood I’ve known all my life — it could be you, for all I know.”
Mrs. Snell laughs; I laugh back, and tell her it’s a ridiculous notion. I’m not even from around here.
“I know. But for someone not familiar with the streets, you certainly found my house easily enough. Usually it takes reporters all day, and asking around at neighbour’s houses, to find our little cottage.”
I can smell blood from miles away, I tell Mrs. Snell jokingly. It’s the reporter in me.
So, we have two murders that resemble the infamous Whitechapel murders of four years ago, both in date, time and modus operandi. Are we dealing with a copycat killer or the ghost of Fred Deeming?
“Most definitely a copycat,” police constable Adam Neil told me. “I’ve seen enough death to know that a man is behind those two butcherings in Little Lon, not a blooming ghost. And rest assured, we’ll do everything in our power to catch this maniac before he kills again. I mean cripes, whoever this guy is he ain’t doing a very good job of replicating the Ripper killings — he started with the third victim, so what does that tell ya?”
Maybe Jack didn’t kill those first two women, I tell PC Neil. I’ve long been of the opinion that the Ripper was responsible for only five killings, not the nine that is generally attributed to the Whitechapel fiend, with Nichols being the first and Kelly the last. And if that is correct, then wouldn’t that mean that either the copycat is in fact very knowledgeable about the Ripper crimes, or go a long ways to substantiate the idea that it is the spirit of the Ripper committing the murders, the spirit of Fred Deeming?
“Phaw!” PC Neil said, a deep frown creasing his young brow. “That’s a tall one if ever I heard it. The Ripper killed nine women, and there ain’t no such thing as ghosts. So this joker cutting up street walkers, whoever he is, is a fool and don’t know his history, and we’ll catch him, don’t you worry ‘bout that.”
So, was Deeming Jack the Ripper?
We know that Deeming was capable of murder, and particularly violent and callous ones at that.
Certainly the newspapers around the world were quick to connect Deeming with the Ripper. After all, he’s a Brit and killed his two wives and three children by slashing their throats. He admitted to buying knives in Whitechapel at the time of the murders, and a London dressmaker identified Deeming as being with her on both the night of the double murder in Whitechapel, and the morning after, where he showed great knowledge of the Eddowes murder. Apparently they were together on the 30th of September, and met up again the next morning. Though Deeming had told the lady his name was Lawson, the dressmaker identified the man she was with, and who frightened her with talk of the mutilations, as that of Fred Deeming when showed a photograph of him. It’s also interesting to note that Deeming’s father tried to commit suicide numerous times by cutting his own throat with a knife.
“He had a great hatred for his father,” Doctor Shields, a physician at the Melbourne Gaol, told me. “His father used to beat Frederick as a child, savage beatings that must’ve taken a great toll on the boy, both physically and mentally. He turned to his mother, with whom he had a close relationship, and who, as a Sunday school teacher, drummed into him the wages of sin and punishment. He told me how much he loved his mother, and how devastated he was when she died in ‘75. Frederick was in his early twenties at the time. As much as he loved his mother, he loathed his father more. When I met with him in prison, I found him dull and moody; he told me he often fantasised about his past, that he wished his mother was still alive. He told me he talks to her, every night at 2am, and that she tells him things, including telling him to kill his wives and children. When I asked him about his father, he grew red-faced, incensed, and he roared how he wished he was the one who had slashed his father’s throat, because he would have done it properly; wouldn’t have botched it all those times like his father had. After speaking with the man, I have no doubt his mind was afflicted with a kind of madness, partly borne from his childhood, partly due to a disease of the mind from late stage syphilis. He told me that he had gone searching for a woman who had given him the venereal disease, intending to kill her. Of this he said with a peculiar voice: ‘I’ve had my own back, anyhow, as more than one of them found out.’ He believed in the extermination of all such women.”
When asked if he suspected Deeming of being Jack the Ripper, the doctor refused to answer. However, he did make one last comment regarding Deeming, which was as strange as it was puzzling.
“Not only were his parents deeply religious, but they were strongly superstitious and believed in the spirit world, and claimed to have psychic powers. Deeming told me that his father used to tell him that he had the devil in him and would come to a terrible end, and his mother even prophesied that he was born to be hung. When I saw Deeming, he was forever clutching the Book of Common Prayer, and in his cell they found other books, such as Hymns, Ancient and Modern and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. He never mentioned it to me, but I tend to suspect that his parents passed onto him their belief in the spirit world and their psychic ability.”
But surely the most damning statement in regards to Deeming being the Ripper comes from an unlikely source — one of Fred’s inmates at Melbourne Gaol.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, contacted me when he heard I was writing this article and after hearing about the murders of the prostitutes in the city. Wanting to unload what he knew, perhaps to lift some of the guilt he had been carrying around with him for the past five months, he told me this remarkable story, which he swears is true and came straight from Deeming himself.