Martha Tabram
Martha Tabram | |
---|---|
Born | Martha White 10 May 1849 |
Died | 7 August 1888 Whitechapel, London, England | (aged 39)
Cause of death | Multiple stab wounds to the body, including vital organs such as the heart[1] |
Body discovered | George Yard, Whitechapel 51°30′46″N 0°05′08″W / 51.5128°N 0.0855°W |
Occupation | Prostitute |
Known for | Victim of the Whitechapel murders |
Spouse |
Henry Tabram (m. 1869) |
Children | 2 |
Parent(s) | Charles Samuel White Elisabeth White (née Dowsett) |
Martha Tabram[2] (née White; 10 May 1849 – 7 August 1888) was an English woman killed in a spate of violent murders in and around the Whitechapel district of East London between 1888 and 1891. She may have been the first victim of the unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper.
Although not one of the canonical five Ripper victims whom historians have broadly acknowledged, she is considered the next most likely candidate.
Early life
Tabram was born Martha White in Southwark, London, on 10 May 1849.[3] She was the youngest of five children born to Charles Samuel White, a warehouseman, and his wife, Elisabeth Dowsett. In order of birth, her four older siblings were Henry, Stephen, Esther and Mary Ann. She was 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm) tall and had dark hair.[4]
In May 1865, Tabram's parents separated; six months later, her father died of natural causes at the age of 59. According to his daughter Mary Ann, her father had been unable to work for several months prior to his death.[5]
Marriage
On Christmas Day 1869, Martha married a foreman furniture packer named Henry Samuel Tabram. The service was conducted at Trinity Church in St. Mary's Parish, Newington. In 1871, the couple moved to a house close to Martha's childhood home. She and Henry had two sons: Frederick John Tabram (born February 1871) and Charles Henry Tabram (born December 1872).
Because of Martha's drinking, which was heavy enough to cause alcoholic fits, the Tabrams' marriage was troubled. Martha's husband left her in 1875. For about three years he paid her an allowance of 12 shillings a week, then reduced this to two shillings and sixpence when he heard she was living with another man.[6]
Tabram lived on and off with Henry Turner, a carpenter, from about 1876 until three weeks before her death. This relationship was also troubled by Martha's drinking and occasionally staying out all night. She, and her sons, were listed as being overnight inmates at the Whitechapel Union workhouse's casual ward at Thomas Street[7] on the census night of 1881.[8] By 1888 Turner was out of regular employment and the couple earned income by selling trinkets and other small articles on the streets, while lodging for about four months at 4 Star Place, off Commercial Road in Whitechapel. Around the beginning of July, they left abruptly, owing rent, and separated for the last time about the middle of that month.[9] Tabram moved to a common lodging house at 19 George Street, Spitalfields.[10] By the time of her death, Tabram's economic situation had become so desperate that she was forced to trade sex for money on the streets.[11]
6 August 1888
On 6 August 1888, the night before her murder, Tabram was drinking ale and rum with another woman, and some-time prostitute, Mary Ann Connelly, known as "Pearly Poll", and two soldiers in a
Murder
In the early hours of the following morning, a resident of the Buildings, one Mrs. Hewitt, was awoken by cries of "Murder!", but domestic violence and shouts of that nature were common in the area and she ignored the noise.[14] At 2:00 a.m., two other residents, husband and wife Joseph and Elizabeth Mahoney, returned to the Buildings and saw no one on the stairs. At the same time, the patrolling beat officer, PC Thomas Barrett, questioned a grenadier loitering nearby, who replied that he was waiting for a friend.[15] At 3:30 a.m., resident Albert George Crow returned home after a night's work as a cab driver and noticed Tabram's body lying on a landing above the first flight of stairs. The landing was so dimly lit that he mistook her for a sleeping vagrant and it was not until just before 5:00 a.m. that a resident coming down the stairs on his way to work, dock labourer John Saunders Reeves, realised she was dead.[16]
Reeves fetched Barrett, who sent for Dr. Timothy Robert Killeen to examine the body. Killeen arrived at about 5:30 a.m. and estimated that Tabram had been dead for around 3 hours.[17] Her killer had stabbed her 39 times in the body and neck, including nine times in the throat, five in the left lung, two in the right lung, one in the heart, five in the liver, two in the spleen, and six in the stomach, also wounding her lower abdomen and genitals.[18] She was lying on her back and her clothing was raised to her middle, exposing her lower half, which indicated the body lay in a sexual position. Killeen, however, could supply no evidence of intercourse.[17] The testimony of the residents and Dr Killeen indicated that Tabram was killed between 2:00 a.m. and 3:30 a.m.[n 2] Residents had seen and heard nothing amiss between these times.
Investigation
The local inspector of the
Another soldier from the Tower, Corporal Benjamin, who was absent without leave, was also dismissed from the investigation after it transpired that he had been visiting his father in
Connelly was not wholly cooperative with police and hid with a cousin for a while near Drury Lane,[21] not coming forward until 9 August.[22] She missed an identity parade arranged at the Tower for 10 August, but attended the rescheduled one on the 13th.[23] Connelly failed to recognise the clients and claimed that the men that night had worn white cap-bands. As such bands were worn only by the Coldstream Guards, rather than the Grenadier Guards at the Tower, Connelly was taken to another identity parade at Wellington Barracks on the 15th, where she picked out two soldiers, but both had solid alibis.[24] One had been at home with his wife, while the other had been in the barracks.[25] Tabram's body was formally identified on 14 August by her estranged husband. At the time of her death she was wearing a black bonnet, a long black jacket, a dark green skirt, a brown petticoat and stockings, and spring-sided boots showing considerable wear. She was 5 feet 3 inches tall and had dark hair.[22] The inquest into her death was concluded by deputy coroner for South-East Middlesex George Collier on 23 August at the Working Lad's Institute, Whitechapel Road, with a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. No suspect was ever arrested for Tabram's murder.[26]
Jack the Ripper
Contemporary newspaper reports published at the beginning of September linked Tabram's murder to those of Emma Elizabeth Smith on 3 April and Mary Ann Nichols on 31 August, though before she died, Smith had told the police that a gang had attacked her.[27] The later killings of Annie Chapman on 8 September, of both Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes on 30 September and of Mary Jane Kelly on 9 November were also linked at the time to Tabram's. The last five murders mentioned are now generally referred to as the "canonical five" victims of Jack the Ripper. All were knife murders of impoverished prostitutes in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts, generally perpetrated in darkness in the small hours of the morning, in a secluded site to which the public could gain access, and which occurred on or close to a weekend or holiday.[n 3]
The police did not connect the murder with Smith's, but they did connect her death with the later five murders.
Several 20th-century psychological reports have assumed Mary Ann Nichols to have been Jack the Ripper's first victim, but add that her murder was unlikely to have been his first attack. Some have suggested the Ripper may have murdered Tabram before perfecting his modus operandi of overpowering and cutting the throats of his victims.
Sir Melville Macnaghten was only actively involved in the Whitechapel murders investigation between 1889 and 1891; thus, his notes reflect only the opinions of some police officers at the time and include several factual errors in the information presented pertaining to possible suspects. Serial killers have been known to have changed their murder weapons, but especially to develop their modus operandi over time, as the Ripper did with increasingly severe mutilations. While the five canonical Ripper murders were located roughly north, south, east and west of Whitechapel, Tabram's murder occurred close to their geographic centre. It is possible that her murder was one of the first committed by the Ripper before he had chosen his later modus operandi.[29]
In 1998 an Australian researcher, Ted Linn, produced his findings in a booklet called The Case of the Redhanded Copycat, in which he outlines his case that Martha's husband, Henry Samuel Tabram, was the real Ripper. He bases this on cryptographic clues he claims to have found in letters written by the Ripper and other evidence.[33][34]
See also
- Cold case
- List of serial killers before 1900
- Unsolved murders in the United Kingdom
Notes
- ^ This location is now named Gunthorpe Street. Residential flats stand on the site of George Yard Buildings
- ^ The time of Tabram's murder, at least two hours after leaving the public house with her soldier client, would have allowed sufficient time for Tabram to solicit another client
- ^ Tabram's murder occurred in the early hours of 7 August. 6 August was a bank holiday
References
- ^ "Inquest: Martha Tabram: Day 1". casebook.org. 2 April 2004. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
- ^ Her name is sometimes misspelt in the press as "Martha Tabran" (e.g. The Times, 24 August 1888, quoted in Evans and Skinner, p. 18) and she was at other times known as "Emma" or "Martha Turner", taking the last name of the man with whom she had most recently lived.
- ^ Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 34
- ^ Evans and Skinner, pp. 9, 18
- ^ "Casebook: Martha Tabram". casebook.org. 2 April 2004. Retrieved 9 June 2023.
- ^ Evans and Skinner, pp. 18–19
- ^ Peter Higginbotham. "The Workhouse". www.workhouses.org.uk. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
- ^ "DocumentsOnline | Poor Law Union and Workhouse records". The National Archives. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
- ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 53
- ^ Evans and Skinner, p. 11
- ^ Gray, Drew. Jack and the Thames Torso Murders
- ^ "Locality of the Whitechapel Women-Murders". Reynold's News. 11 November 1888. Retrieved 4 June 2023.
- ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 53; Fido, p. 16; Marriott, p. 11
- ^ Fido, p. 17
- ^ Evans and Skinner, pp. 16–17
- ^ Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 51–52; Fido, p. 17
- ^ a b Evans and Rumbelow, p. 51
- ^ "The Whitechapel Murder". The Huddersfield Chronicle. 10 August 1888. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
- ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 54; Evans and Skinner, pp. 13–14
- ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 54; Evans and Skinner, pp. 11, 17
- ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 55; Fido, p. 18
- ^ a b Evans and Rumbelow, p. 52
- ^ Evans and Skinner, p. 15
- ^ Evans and Rumbelow, p. 54; Evans and Skinner, pp. 15–17; Fido, p. 18
- ^ Evans and Skinner, pp. 15–18; Marriott, p. 12
- ^ Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 54–55
- ^ Evans and Skinner, pp. 4–7
- Robert Andersonsaid the second murder occurred on 31 August (quoted in Evans and Skinner, p. 632).
- ^ a b Marriott, p. 13
- ^ Fido, p. 152
- ^ Cook, p. 218
- ^ Eddleston, p. 12
- ^ Robert Hefner, "Victim's husband 'the real Ripper'", Sunday Times, 15 March 1998, p. 1
- ^ Hefner, "Cracking the Ripper's code", Sunday Times, 15 March 1998, p. 19
Bibliography
- Begg, Paul (2003). Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History. London: Pearson Education. ISBN 0-582-50631-X
- Begg, Paul (2004). Jack the Ripper: The Facts. New York City: Barnes & Noble Books. ISBN 978-0-760-77121-1
- Evans, Stewart P.; ISBN 0-7509-4228-2
- Evans, Stewart P.; Skinner, Keith (2000). The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. London: Constable and Robinson. ISBN 1-84119-225-2
- ISBN 978-0-297-79136-2
- ISBN 978-0-863-79040-9
- Marriott, Trevor (2005). Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation. London: John Blake. ISBN 1-84454-103-7
External links
- 12 November 1888 Evening Star news article pertaining to the murder of Martha Tabram
- 2009 The Daily Telegraph article detailing the victims of Jack the Ripper
- Casebook: Jack the Ripper
- The Whitechapel Murder Victims: Martha Tabram at whitechapeljack.com