Emma Elizabeth Smith
Emma Elizabeth Smith was a woman of uncertain origins who was murdered in late‑19th-century London. Her killing was the first of the Whitechapel murders. Although it has been suggested that she may have been an early victim of the serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper", most modern authors consider this unlikely.
Life
Smith's life prior to her murder in 1888 remains obscure. Police files were compiled during the investigation, but most are now missing, apparently taken, mislaid, or discarded from the Metropolitan Police archive before the transfer of papers to the Public Record Office. In the surviving material, Inspector Edmund Reid recorded that she had a "son and daughter living in Finsbury Park area". Walter Dew, then a detective constable with H Division, later wrote:At the time of her death in 1888, Smith had been living in a lodging-house at 18 George Street, Spitalfields, in London's East End for approximately eighteen months, paying 4d for a bed.
Murder
Prior to being fatally assaulted, Smith was last seen by fellow resident, 54-year-old Margaret Hayes, at 18 George Street at approximately 12:15 am on Tuesday, 3 April 1888, the day after the Easter Monday bank holiday. According to Hayes, Smith had been standing near Farrant Street, talking with a man dressed in dark clothing and a white scarf. She is believed to have been attacked at the junction of Osborn Street and Brick Lane, Whitechapel, approximately seventy-five minutes later. The location of the assault was about 300 yards from her lodging house. Although injured, she survived the attack and managed to walk back to the lodging house.Upon her return, Smith told the deputy keeper, Mary Russell, that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager. Russell and another lodger, Annie Lee, took her to the London Hospital, where she was treated by the house surgeon George Haslip. She fell into a coma and developed peritonitis; she died at 9 am the following day. A medical examination by the duty surgeon, Dr G. H. Hillier, revealed that a blunt object had been inserted into her vagina, rupturing the peritoneum. The police were not informed of the incident until 6 April, when they were told that an inquest was to be held the following day. The inquest, conducted at the hospital 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 jury returned a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.
Chief Inspector West placed the investigation in the hands of Inspector Edmund Reid of H Division. Reid noted in his report that her clothing was "in such dirty ragged condition that it was impossible to tell if any part of it had been fresh torn". Walter Dew later described the investigation:
Smith had not provided descriptions of the men who attacked her, and no witnesses came forward or were found. The investigation proved fruitless, and the murderer or murderers were never caught.