The dairyman described the stranger as about twenty-eight years old with a ruddy complexion, a three days’ growth of beard, dark hair and large staring eyes, and as having the general appearance of a “clerk” or “student.” The white coveralls and jacket – similar to what an “engineer” wore – were also what Sickert used to cover his clothing when he painted in his studios. Three sets of these white coveralls were donated by his second wife’s family to the Tate Archive.
The dairyman’s story takes on even more suspicious shadings when added to it is another account of clothing in the news after Elizabeth Stride’s and Catherine Eddows’s murders. The day following their murders, Monday, October 1st, at nine o’clock, a Mr. Chinn, who was the proprietor of Nelson Tavern in Kentish Town, discovered a newspaper-wrapped package behind the door of an outbuilding behind the tavern. He ignored the package until he happened to read about Elizabeth Stride’s murder and realized that the package in his outbuilding matched the description of the one carried by a man who was seen talking to Elizabeth less than half an hour before her death.
Mr. Chinn went to the police station on Kentish Town Road to report the matter. When a detective arrived at the tavern, the package had been kicked into the roadway and had burst open. Inside was a pair of blood-soaked dark trousers. Hair was found adhering to coagulated bloodstains on the newspaper wrapping. No further description of the hair or newspaper wrapping seems to be known, and the trousers were subsequently carried off by a street person. I suppose the detective had no further use of them and simply left them in the road.
The description of the man carrying a newspaper-wrapped package whom Police Constable William Smith observed talking to Elizabeth Stride is similar to the description the dairyman gave police: Both men had a dark complexion, were clean-shaven – or at least had no full beard – and were approximately twenty-eight years old. The Nelson Tavern in Kentish Town was about two miles east of where Sickert lived in South Hampstead. He did not have a dark or weathered complexion, but it would have been easy enough for him to create one with makeup. He did not have dark hair. But actors wore wigs and dyed their hair.
It would have been a simple matter to leave wrapped packages or even Gladstone bags in hidden places, and it is doubtful that Sickert would have cared whether the police recovered a pair of bloody trousers. In those days, nothing useful could be learned from them unless they bore some sort of marking that could have been traced back to the owner.
Facial mutilations can be extremely revealing, and a forensic psychologist or profiler would assign great importance to the mutilation of Catherine Eddows’s face, which, in Chief Inspector Donald Swanson’s words, damaged her “almost beyond identity.” The face is the person. To mutilate it is personal. Often this degree of violence occurs when the victim and assailant are known to each other, but not always. Sickert used to slash paintings to tatters when he decided to destroy his work. On one occasion he instructed his wife Ellen to go out and buy two curved, sharp knives that he said were just like ones she used for pruning.
This took place in Paris, according to the story Sickert told to writer Osbert Sitwell. Sickert said he needed the knives to help slash Whistler’s paintings. The Master had a habit of being discontented with his work, and when all else failed, he destroyed his art. Burning was one method. Cutting up paintings was another. While Sickert was an apprentice, he probably would have assisted in ripping up canvases, just as he claimed, and perhaps with the very knives he mentioned to Sitwell. Exactly when those knives would have been purchased can’t be determined, but it was most likely between 1885 and 1887 or early 1888. Before 1885, Sickert wasn’t married. In 1888 Whistler was, and his relationship with Sickert was tapering off and would end entirely less than ten years later.
An artist destroying a painting that he or she has grown to hate is in some measure analogous to a killer destroying the face of a victim. The destruction could be an effort to eradicate an object that causes the artist frustration and rage. Or it could be an attempt to ruin what one can’t possess, whether it is artistic perfection or another human being. If one wants sex and can’t have it, to destroy the object of lust is to make it no longer desirable.