The Whitechapel Horror

Chapter 2: The Station

"Will you stop looking at her?!"

"Why, it's hilarious! Why shouldn't I look?"

Murmurs and laughter shook the walls of 29 Aldgate High Street.

"It's embarrassing and nothing else!"

"Oh lighten up!"

A crowd was beginning to form around the peculiar street artist.

"And look what she's wearing! It's disdainful,"

"Well, her impression is spot on that's for certain!"

Standing in the center of the square, at precisely 11:55 pm, stood Miss Catherine Eddowes entertaining a delighted a crowd of onlookers with a spontaneous and rather accurate imitation of a fire engine.

"WEEOH! WEEOH! WEEOH! Why look! How terrible, how awful! It's a house fire!" screamed Catherine.

"Won't anyone help me smother this horrid fire?"

Catherine beckoned to the crowd, yet her request was met empty handed.

"Well," hiccuped Catherine, "Suppose I must do it alone then!"

However before Catherine could save the day, she tripped over her feet and landed on the cobblestones. The crowd belched with laughter and threw coins in front of her.

"Why thank you," Catherine blubbered after taking a messy bow. Before the crowd could throw another penny however, she had laid down on the pavement and drifted asleep.

The crowd slowly melted away yet was halted by a surly man in gold buttoned uniform. It was PC Robinson of the City Police.

"Stop, all of you! Who is this woman? Does anyone know her whereabouts?"

The crowd grew silent.

"No one?" Robinson sighed as he shuffled toward Catherine.

Robinson dragged her to her feet and lent her against a wall. Much to the crowd's amusement, Catherine slid right back down. A rebellious roar came from the gathering yet ended abruptly with a glance from PC Robinson.

"George! Come help me with this broad! She's pissed," shouted Robinson.

The two officers hauled Catherine past the snickering crowd, manhandling her roughly, 'till she entered the doors of the Bishopsgate Police Station.

"Now, what's your name, love?" asked PC George Simmons.

Catherine took a long look around the station, gazed up at the ceiling, down at the floor, at the officers, then to the table and answered, "Nothing,"

PC Robinson clenched his teeth and threw Catherine into a cell.

"Now you sober up!" they yelled at her frustratedly.

Catherine's eyes closed the moment her naked body hit the cell floor and she fell into a comatose sleep with a dopey smile plastered across her face.

An uneventful hour passed in which Catherine tossed and turned, remembering where she had ran from, and the two officers hid their faces in their hats. PC George Hutt, the City gaoler, came on duty at 12:30 am, taking over for the two. George Hutt was a rather anxious man and tended to check on the prisoners every few minutes. Catherine remained asleep.

Hutt was especially nervous tonight for he had taken over the two officers' posts in a rather alarming circumstance. In fact PC George Hutt was clutching his keys and heading out of the room at the very moment an emergency bell was rung. Robinson and Simmons were torn from their slumber yet Catherine was not.