Artist, critic, and Sickert supporter D. S. MacColl once wrote in a letter that Walter Sickert “will over calculate himself one day.” Sickert didn’t, at least not during his lifetime. Law enforcement was not equipped to follow the forensic and psychological traces he left each time he killed. In today’s investigations, evidence collection would have been conducted in a way that would have seemed to the Victorians like some fantasy out of Jules Verne. Catherine Eddows’s crime scene was a difficult one because it was outdoors in a public place that would have been contaminated by the multitudes. The lighting was terrible, and the sensationalism of the crime would have caused police to fear further contamination by the curious who were certain to gather – even long after the body had been removed to the City mortuary on Golden Lane.
The most important piece of evidence in any homicide is the body. All evidence connected to it must be preserved by any means possible. At this writing, were Catherine Eddows’s body discovered in Mitre Square, the police would immediately seal off the scene, radio for more troops to secure the area, and contact the medical examiner. Lights would be set up, and rescue vehicles would arrive with emergency lights flashing. All avenues, roads, and passageways leading to the crime scene would be barricaded and guarded by police.
A detective or member of a forensic unit would begin videotaping the scene from the outer perimeter, again aware of bystanders. It is quite possible – in fact, I would bet on it – that Sickert showed up at every crime scene and blended into the crowds. He would not have been able to resist seeing the reaction of his audience. In a painting of his called The Fair at Night, Dieppe, the scene he depicts looks very much like what one might expect to see when spectators surrounded the East End locations where the murders took place.
The Fair at Night, Dieppe, circa 1901, shows a mob of people from the rear, as if we are looking through the eyes of an observer who is standing some distance behind the curious crowd. Were it not for what appears to be a carousel tent intruding into the painting from the right, there would be no reason to think the scene has anything to do with a fair. The people don’t necessarily seem interested in the carousel, but in the activity occurring in the direction of tenement housing or row houses.
Sickert painted The Fair at Night, Dieppe from a sketch. He drew what he witnessed until he was in his sixties. Then he began to paint from photographs, as if the more his sexual energy waned, the less he felt the compulsion to go out and experience his art. “One can’t work at all over 50 like one did at 40,” Sickert admitted.
A fair or carnival is exactly what the Ripper’s crime scenes became, with boys hawking special editions of newspapers, vendors arriving with carts, and neighbors selling tickets. The International Working Men’s Educational Club on Berner Street charged admission to enter the yard where Elizabeth Stride was murdered, thereby raising money to print its socialist tracts. For a penny, one could purchase “A Thrilling Romance” about the Whitechapel Murders that included “all details connected with these Diabolical Crimes, and faithfully pictures the Night Horrors of this portion of the Great City.”
In all of the Ripper’s murders, no footprints or tracks leading away from the bodies were ever found. It is hard for me to imagine that he didn’t step in blood when pints of it were spurting and flowing from the fatal injuries he inflicted on his victims. But these bloody footprints would not have been visible without the aid of alternate light sources and chemicals. Trace evidence would have been missed, and one can be certain that the Ripper left hairs, fibers, and other microscopic particles at the scene and on his victims. He carried trace evidence away with him on his person, footwear, and clothing.
The Ripper’s victims would have been a forensic nightmare because of the contamination and mixture of trace evidence – including seminal fluid – from multiple clients, all of it exacerbated by the women’s pitiful hygiene. But there would have been some substance, organic or inorganic, worth collecting. Unusual evidence may very well have been discovered. Cosmetics worn by a killer are easily transferred to a victim. Had Sickert applied grease paint to darken his skin, had he temporarily dyed his hair, or had he been wearing adhesives for false mustaches and beards, these substances could be discovered by using a polarized light microscope or chemical analysis or spectrophotofluorometric methods, such as the Omnichrome light, that are available to forensic scientists today.