In 1888, little was known about the behavior of blood. It has a character all its own and a behavior that dutifully abides by the laws of physics. It isn’t like any other liquid, and when it is pumping at a high pressure through a person’s arteries, it is not going to simply drip or slowly drain when one of those arteries is cut. At Martha’s crime scene inside the stairwell, a high arterial spatter pattern on a wall would indicate that the stab wound to her neck severed an artery and occurred while she was standing and still had a blood pressure. An arterial pattern peaks and dips in rhythm with the heart and would also indicate whether a victim was on the ground when an artery was cut. The examination of the pattern helps establish the sequence of events during the attack. If a major artery is severed and there is no arterial spatter, in all likelihood other injuries have already just about extinguished the victim’s life.
The stabbing and cutting wounds to Martha Tabran’s genitals indicate a sexual component to the crime. Yet if it is true – as it seems to have been in all of the alleged Ripper murders – that there was no indication of “connection,” as the Victorians called intercourse, then this is a pattern that should have been treated very seriously, but wasn’t. I am not sure how a “connection” was determined. The problem with a prostitute is she may have “connected” numerous times in one night, and rarely if ever cleaned off the many levels of civilization she carried on her body.
Furthermore, body fluids could not be tested for blood type or DNA, nor was there any attempt to distinguish between human and animal blood in criminal investigations. Had there been evidence of recent sexual activity, the seminal fluid would have been of no forensic value. However, a consistent absence of seminal fluid or evidence of attempted intercourse – as is true in every Ripper murder – suggests that the killer did not engage in sexual activity with the victim before or after death. This pattern is not unheard of but it is uncommon with violent psychopaths, who may rape as they kill, climax as their victims die, or masturbate over the bodies after death. The lack of seminal fluid in the Ripper lust-murders is consistent with the supposition that Sickert was incapable of sex.
By modern standards, Martha Tabran’s murder was investigated so poorly that it could hardly be called an investigation at all. Her murder did not excite the police or the press. There was virtually no public mention of her brutal slaying until the first inquest hearing on August 10th. There was little follow-up as time passed. Martha Tabran wasn’t important to anyone in particular. It was assumed, as we used to say when I worked in the morgue, that she simply died the way she lived.
Her murder was savage, but it was not seen as the initial attack of an evil force that had invaded the Great Metropolis. Martha was a filthy worn-out whore and deliberately placed herself at great risk by the life she chose to live. She willingly plied a trade that required her to elude the police as much as her murderer did, it was pointed out in the press. It was hard to feel much pity for the likes of her, and public sentiment then was really no different from what it is now: The victim is to blame. Excuses in modern courtrooms are just as disheartening and infuriating. If she hadn’t dressed that way; if he hadn’t driven into that part of town; if she didn’t go to bars looking for a man; I told her not to go jogging in that area of the park; what do you expect when you let your child walk home alone from the bus stop? As my mentor Dr. Marcella Fierro, chief medical examiner of Virginia, says, “A woman has a right to walk around naked and not be raped or murdered.” Martha Tabran had a right to live.
“The inquiry,” Chief Inspector Donald Swanson summarized in his report, “was confined amongst persons of deceased’s class in the East End, but without any success.”