Tom Holland

And he, again, if he's to be trusted, is the last witness to see her alive, but not perhaps the last to hear Mary Jane's voice, because there are two separate women.

And one of them is a woman called Elizabeth Prater, who is the lodger in the rooms directly above Mary Jane's room.

And the other is a laundress called Sarah Lewis, who has been made homeless and is taking refuge with a couple on the room opposite 13 Miller Court across the courtyard.

and both these women reported hearing screams of murder at around 4 a.m yeah and listeners may be wondering well why didn't they do something about it and in fact the police asked exactly this question and mrs prater said she told the police i did not take much notice of the cries as i frequently hear such cries right and it is worth adding that the um the autopsy the doctors who did that the surgeons

They suggested that the likeliest time of death was around 4 a.m.

Which is never done before, before this killing.

Right, so those two suspects who are seen with Mary Jane on the evening of her death, both of them have been identified as very strong candidates to have been the Ripper.

But I think actually neither of them necessarily are.

I think the guy with the karate mustache, I mean, clearly, you know, he's going in at just after midnight.

Mary Jane is, is desperate for large numbers of clients.

It's perfectly possible that she did go out and maybe get this guy in the Astrakhan coat.

And it's perfectly possible after that, that she went out and got someone else who might be the ripper.

Yeah.

So it's not definitive.

But whoever it was that ended up in that room with Mary Jane at around four o'clock in the morning, we know the upshot because we have described it in all its hideous detail.

And of course, it takes time for the examining surgeons to make sense of the horror.

And it's not until four o'clock in the afternoon that you can't really call it a body.

The kind of the remains, the mangled remains of Mary Jane Kelly is removed from her room.

And by this point, a cart with a tarpaulin cover has arrived and is waiting outside the dark passageway that leads out into Dorset Street.

And by now, as is becoming commonplace with a Jack the Ripper murder, huge numbers of people are gathering outside the scene of the crime.