“annoying” him in every way since. She had pushed him against a
wall, and when he inquired about dinner, she almost spat in his face
with “the vehemence of her language” and stigmatized him “as a low
American.”
“Why don’t you leave such a land lady and her apartment?” Mr.
Biron asked.
“I went there with some furniture, and I was foolish enough to tell
her that she might have it and take it out in the rent. Instead she took
it out of me.”
(Laughter)
“And I could not take it away,” the American went on. “I should be
positively frightened to try.”
(Renewed laughter)
“It seems you have made a very ridiculous bargain,” Mr. Biron told
him. “You find yourself in an exceedingly embarrassing position.”
“I do indeed,” the American agreed. “You can have no conception of
such a land lady. She threw a pair of scissors at me, lustily screamed
‘murder,’ and then caught hold of the lappels [sic] of my coat to prevent my escape, really a most absurd situation.” (Laughter)
“Well,” said Mr. Biron, “you have brought all the unpleasantness on yourself.”
This was the lead police story in The Times, yet no crime had been committed and no arrest was made. The best the magistrate could offer was perhaps to send a warrant officer by the Sloane Street address to “caution” the landlady that she best behave. The American thanked “his worship” and expressed his hope that the caution “would have a salutary result.”
The reporter identified the New York art student only as the “Applicant. ” No name, age, or description was given. There was no follow-up story in days to come. The National Gallery did not have an art school or students. It still doesn’t. I find it strange if not unbelievable that an American would use the language the so-called art student did. Would an American use the word shindy, which was London street slang for fight or row? Would an American say that the landlady “lustily screamed ‘murder’ “?
Screaming “murder” could have been a reference to testimony at Ripper victim inquests, and why would the landlady scream “murder” when she was the attacker, not the American? The reporter never mentioned whether the “American” spoke like an American. Sickert was quite capable of faking an American accent. He had spent years with Whistler, who was American.
About this time, a story began to circulate through the news that an American had contacted a sub-curator of a medical school in hopes of buying human uteri for £20 each. The would-be purchaser wanted the organs preserved in glycerine to keep them pliable, and planned to send them out with a journal article he had written. The request was refused.
The “American” was not identified, and no further information about him was given. The story gave rise to a new possibility: The East End murderer was killing women to sell their organs, and the stealing of Annie Chapman’s rings was a “veil” to hide the real motive, which was to steal her uterus.
The stealing of human organs might seem ridiculous, but it had been barely fifty years since the infamous case of Burke and Hare, the “Resurrectionists” – or body snatchers – who were charged with robbing graves and committing as many as thirty murders to supply doctors and medical schools in Edinburgh with anatomical specimens for dissection. Organ-stealing as a motive for the Ripper’s murders continued to be circulated and more confusion eddied around the Ripper crimes.
On September 21st, Ellen Sickert wrote a letter to her brother-in-law, Dick Fisher, and said that Sickert had left England for Normandy to visit “his people,” and would be gone for weeks. Sickert may have left, but not necessarily for France. The next night, Saturday, a woman was murdered in Birtley, Durham, which is in the coal-mining country of northeast Eng- ( land, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Jane Boatmoor, a twenty-six-year-old mother who was rumored to lead a somewhat less than respectable life, was last seen alive by friends the night before, on Saturday, at eight o’clock. Her body was found the following morning, Sunday, September 23rd, in a gutter near Guston Colliery Railway.
The left side of her neck had been cut through to her vertebrae. A gash i on the right side of her face had laid open her lower jaw to the bone, and £ her bowels protruded from her mutilated abdomen. The similarities between her murder and those in London’s East End prompted Scotland Yard to send Dr. George Phillips and an inspector to meet with Durham police officials. No helpful evidence was found, and for some reason, it was decided that the killer probably had committed suicide. Local people made extensive searches of mine shafts, but no body was recovered and the crime went unsolved. However, in an anonymous letter to the City of London Police, dated November 20, 1888, the writer offers this suggestion: “Look at the case in County Durham… twas made to appear as if it was Jack the Ripper.”