The Whitechapel Horror

Chapter 3: The Discovery

At 1:44am, as PC Watkins was making his nightly rounds, the moon escaped from its clouded sheath.

"Good lord, finally," muttered Watkins, who had spent the past half an hour avoiding the darkest alleyways. He strolled along Mitre Street, then veered directly into Mitre Square. His eyes, still adjusting to the sudden wave of light melting upon the city, squinted to focus on something in the center of the enclosed, cobbled drive. The milky light hugged the blurry figure on the road. There was another shape near a corner connecting a factory enclosure to a rough wooden fence.

Watkin's blinking eyes suddenly centered and focused. Without so much as another blink, Watkins pulled himself back in horror. He could feel his body turning to ash from the inside, out. Boiling and whirling acid churned in his stomach. Tearing his watering eyes away from the messy sight, he raced toward Kearly and Tonge's warehouse, a supply-catering company located in the East end of London.

Prior to the discovery, Watkins had decided to wander off of his normal midnight trail to visit his retired friend from the fuzz, George Morris. Morris, according to a drunken conversation they had shared at the Manticore Inn, had taken a job working for the tea warehouse as a watchman to keep him away from his "nagging wife." Watkins couldn't thank Mrs. Morris enough for her badgering when he burst into the warehouse and saw his old friend leaning sleepily against a packing machine.

"For God's sake mate," cried Watkins "come to my assistance...here is another woman cut to pieces."

Morris grabbed his lamp and, with one glance at the square's south west corner and the body that inhabited it, jumped three feet and raced towards Aldgate, blowing his whistle furiously.

As only the Illustrated Police News would report later, Morris "could hear the footsteps of the policeman as he passed on his beat every quarter of an hour, so that it appeared impossible that the woman could have uttered any sound without his detecting it. It was only on the night that he remarked to some policeman that he wished the "butcher" would come round Mitre Square and he would give him a doing; yet the "butcher" had come and he was perfectly ignorant of it."

Watkins was left alone with what he could only guess to be a woman's body lying ten feet from his muddied boots. He paced around the other three empty corners of the courtyard passing the two warehouses as dark as ever and listening to the death in the air. PC Watkins, looking for anything to avert his eyes, searched for the killer's escape root. He let his eyes climb the steep walls enclosing the square but there was no answer.

Then, almost by some external force, his eyes plunged to the ground, to the body, to her. Her limbs, swimming before Watkin's eyes were sprawled across the stones like a dead spider. His eyes were seeing double, then triple.

"Right here in the square," panted a voice. Six boots clattered among the cobbles. Morris had brought PC James Harvey and PC Holland from Aldgate.

"Someone get a doctor," whispered Watkins without turning his head from the body. The boots didn't move; they were in awe of the terrible sight.

"Go!" shouted Watkins shaking his head uncontrollably.

As the younger officer, PC Holland, departed to notify Dr. George William Sequeira of Jewry Street about his new autopsy, PC James Harvey took a closer look at the body.

"Looks like the broad had it coming," he smirked.

"What the hell do you mean?" asked Morris aghast.

"Just look at her clothes, I bet she works the street more than once a day," PC Harvey explained.

"A woman has just died here, no matter who she was we must respect it," spat Watkins, his voice betraying him.