Introduction

The Thames Torso Killer should, by rights, take precedence over Jack the Ripper as the world’s first unidentified modern serial killer. He started to kill in early 1887, over a year before the Ripper, and his last murder was in autumn 1889, almost ten months after that of the Ripper’s last victim, Mary Jane Kelly. The Torso Killer murdered and dismembered at least four women, in addition to the unborn child of the only victim who was identified. The police surgeons of the day pieced together the headless remains and provided best-guess descriptions of each woman, while Metropolitan Police officers worked through lists of missing persons. Despite their best endeavours, all but one went nameless to their graves. This book is namedArm of Eve after a sketch by Albrecht Dürer of Eve’s idealised left arm, its hand curled around the forbidden apple, representing the universal woman.

The Metropolitan Police Whitechapel Murders files cover the deaths of eleven women between 1888 and 1891. Those women were similar to each other in their destitution and dependence on street-hawking and soliciting. At least five were casual sex workers killed by Jack the Ripper: Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. A sixth, Martha Tabram, was probably the Ripper’s first kill. Emma Smith, who died twenty-four hours after being attacked, said she was assaulted by a gang of men. Scotland Yard assessed Rose Mylett’s demise to be an accident. The murders of street walkers Alice Kinsey, or McKenzie, and Frances Coles also remained unsolved. Some commentators add Kinsey to the canon of women killed by Jack the Ripper, as her abdominal injuries were similar to the type of posthumous mutilations which he inflicted for his own gratification.

One of the last murders on those files was that of an unidentified woman referred to as the Pinchin Street trunk, whose dismembered torso was discovered under an East End railway arch. Like the other cases, it has long been considered a possible Ripper crime. But the Pinchin Street victim was killed by the Thames Torso Killer. The police of the day classified it as such, attributing it to a second serial killer active at the same time who was believed to have committed four murders. While the Ripper killed between August and November 1888, the Torso Killer started his attacks in April 1887 and probably stopped after the Pinchin Street murder in September 1889.

Extraordinarily, the Torso Killer operated at the same place and time as the Ripper, with whom he shared notable similarities. Like the Ripper, this killer picked his victims through chance sightings of women who fitted his ideal victim type. Mostly dark-haired and busty, they were of a similar age to his wife, and happened to be alone when he spotted them. A few of them, low on funds, might have occasionally sold their bodies for sex. Unlike the Ripper, who did not sexually assault his victims, the Torso Killer was a rapist turned killer; his approach based on the classic rapist’s mantra: isolate – inebriate – penetrate. His frustration with women manifested itself through violence, gaining control through