Emma Elizabeth Smith

Finally, Emma could no longer stave off the severity of her injuries and succumbed to a coma, in which she would die on April 5th at 9:00am. Medical investigation by the duty surgeon, Dr G. H. Hillier, revealed that a blunt object had been inserted into her vagina, rupturing her peritoneum. The police were not informed of the incident until 6 April when they were told an inquest was to be held the next day. The inquest at the hospital, which was conducted by the coroner for East Middlesex, Wynne Edwin Baxter, was attended by Russell, Hillier, and the local chief inspector of the Metropolitan Police Service, H Division Whitechapel, John West. The inquest jury returned a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. Baxter concluded that Emma Elizabeth Smith had been "barbarously" murdered, adding that he had never heard of such a dastardly murder and that "it was impossible to imagine a more brutal case". Baxter had no idea of what was yet to come. Chief Inspector West placed the investigation in the hands of Inspector Edmund Reid of H Division. Reid noted in his report that her clothing. Walter Dew, a detective constable stationed with H Division, later described the investigation: "As in every case of murder in this country, however poor and friendless the victims might be, the police made every effort to track down Emma Smith's assailant. Unlikely as well as likely places were searched for clues. Hundreds of people were interrogated. Scores of statements were taken. Soldiers from the Tower of London [which stood within H Division] were questioned as to their movements. Ships in docks were searched and sailors questioned. "Smith had not provided descriptions of the men who had attacked her and no witnesses came forward or were found. The investigation proved fruitless and the murderer or murderers were never caught. The police couldn't contact any of her relatives either. It is believed by most that it was one of the many Whitechapel gangs which killed Emma Smith, and not the Whitechapel serial killer. 'High rip' gangs were known to patrol the area in which the incident occurred, extorting money from prostitutes and other downtrodden women in return for their protection.

Although forty-five years of age, Emma's life prior to her murder in 1888 remains mysterious. She said she had come 'from the country' around ten years before, leaving her family there and not keeping in touch with them. Police files were gathered during the investigation, but most of these are missing. In the surviving records, Inspector Edmund Reid notes a "son and daughter living in Finsbury Parkarea". Detective Constable Walter Dew later wrote: "Her past was a closed book even to her intimate friends. All she had ever told anyone about herself was that she was a widow who more than ten years before had left her husband and broken away from all her early associations. . . There was something about Emma Smith which suggested that there had been a time when the comforts of life had not been denied her. There was a touch of culture in her speech, unusual in her class. " Once when Emma was asked why she had broken away so completely from her old life she replied, a little wistfully: "They would not understand now any more than they understood then. I must live somehow.

"At the time of her murder in 1888 she had been living in a lodging-house at 18 George Street (since renamed Lolesworth Street), Spitalfields, in the East End of London, for a year and a half, with a routine practically set in stone: she'd leave her lodgings between six and seven in the evening, practice her trade for the night, and return in the small hours of the next morning.

And so it went on Bank Holiday night, Easter Monday (April 3, 1888) that she left around 6:00 PM searching for trade. She was next seen by Margaret Hayes at around 12:15am talking to a man dressed in dark clothes and a white scarf in Fairance Street, Limehouse. As she was returning home that night, at least three, maybe four youths began following her from Whitechapel Church. They would stop her on the corner of Brick Lane and Wentworth Street, where they beat, raped, and viciously jabbed a blunt object into her vagina, tearing the perineum. The boys emptied her purse before leaving her to die on the street. Having just been beaten and raped, and having sustained a sizable and painful injury, Emma Smith stood up and walked back to her lodgings at 18 George Street with her face bloodied and her ear cut. She had apparently removed her shoulder wrap and placed it between her thighs to soak up the blood. It took her 4 hours to get there. The lodging house deputy, Mary Russell and lodger Annie Lee, amazed that she could even have made it this far, rushed her to the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road, apparently against Emma's will. Once there she was seen by George Haslip, the house surgeon and she fought unconsciousness long enough to describe her assailants and the details of her assault.