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So..it’s around 5.30 am and a penniless woman who often resorts to prostitution walks along Hanbury Street. She needs money just as she would have done earlier in the day and just as she would again later in the day. She was permanently dirt poor. She meets a potential client. So what does she do? Does she waste time by taking him walking the streets to find a spot, at a time when there are more people moving around, or does she want somewhere closer like the yard of number 29 to get it over with quickly?
Wherever they would have transacted their business there would have been a chance of them being interrupted but she would hardly have had time to stand around weighing up odds. She may have been known to some residents at number 29 but how long would she have expected to have been there? A couple of minutes or so? Also, would she have been known to all residents given the nature of the items that she hawked? Or just the female occupants? And would there have been someone in and out of that yard every two minutes; or every five; or every ten or fifteen or twenty? So what were the odds of someone interrupting them? The chance would certainly have existed, but if Annie had taken someone to that yard a hundred times for two or three minutes at the same time of day how many times would she have been interrupted? I’d suggest not many. After Richardson left and before Davies arrived for example….how many went into the yard? None.
So how worried would she have been about the possibility of being ‘interrupted?’ Women of her class didn’t have much opportunity for pride or delicacy when earning a pittance and we have to wonder how often in the past she’d been ‘interrupted,’ at various locations…ditto all prostitutes? It was a hazard of the ‘job.’ Would the fact that she might have been known by Mrs Richardson have affected her decision to use the yard? If she had been ‘interrupted’ what would have been the chances of it being by Mrs Richardson herself? If it was by someone else what would the chances of Annie being identified and her identity being reported back to Mrs R? And even if the outside chance occurred that Mrs Richardson found out would she have been particularly surprised? A poor women in Whitechapel, hawking from door to door….it was common knowledge that at least some of these women resorted to prostitution? And even if she’d been told not to come back it would hardly have been the collapse of a business.
Would the killer have been put off by the location? Maybe, at first. But this man was a serial killer with an urge to kill being presented with a perfect victim; a victim who was desperate for money. Would she have had any qualms about telling the killer a lie? Any pangs of conscience? I tend to doubt it. She would probably have assured him that they would be unlikely to be disturbed and that she had used the yard many times without a problem. The killer also would have known that they wouldn’t have been there long and if he was unlucky and someone had shown up he had a knife that he could use. Risk was par for the course.
At the end of the day we can’t second guess how a desperately poor and physically ill prostitute and a murderous maniac with the urge to murder and mutilate would think or act but it doesn’t stop some people assuming that they can in their ever more elaborate attempts to discredit and dismiss inconvenient witnesses in favour of a Doctor whose level of knowledge, according to them, was nothing short of miraculous.
Wherever they would have transacted their business there would have been a chance of them being interrupted but she would hardly have had time to stand around weighing up odds. She may have been known to some residents at number 29 but how long would she have expected to have been there? A couple of minutes or so? Also, would she have been known to all residents given the nature of the items that she hawked? Or just the female occupants? And would there have been someone in and out of that yard every two minutes; or every five; or every ten or fifteen or twenty? So what were the odds of someone interrupting them? The chance would certainly have existed, but if Annie had taken someone to that yard a hundred times for two or three minutes at the same time of day how many times would she have been interrupted? I’d suggest not many. After Richardson left and before Davies arrived for example….how many went into the yard? None.
So how worried would she have been about the possibility of being ‘interrupted?’ Women of her class didn’t have much opportunity for pride or delicacy when earning a pittance and we have to wonder how often in the past she’d been ‘interrupted,’ at various locations…ditto all prostitutes? It was a hazard of the ‘job.’ Would the fact that she might have been known by Mrs Richardson have affected her decision to use the yard? If she had been ‘interrupted’ what would have been the chances of it being by Mrs Richardson herself? If it was by someone else what would the chances of Annie being identified and her identity being reported back to Mrs R? And even if the outside chance occurred that Mrs Richardson found out would she have been particularly surprised? A poor women in Whitechapel, hawking from door to door….it was common knowledge that at least some of these women resorted to prostitution? And even if she’d been told not to come back it would hardly have been the collapse of a business.
Would the killer have been put off by the location? Maybe, at first. But this man was a serial killer with an urge to kill being presented with a perfect victim; a victim who was desperate for money. Would she have had any qualms about telling the killer a lie? Any pangs of conscience? I tend to doubt it. She would probably have assured him that they would be unlikely to be disturbed and that she had used the yard many times without a problem. The killer also would have known that they wouldn’t have been there long and if he was unlucky and someone had shown up he had a knife that he could use. Risk was par for the course.
At the end of the day we can’t second guess how a desperately poor and physically ill prostitute and a murderous maniac with the urge to murder and mutilate would think or act but it doesn’t stop some people assuming that they can in their ever more elaborate attempts to discredit and dismiss inconvenient witnesses in favour of a Doctor whose level of knowledge, according to them, was nothing short of miraculous.
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