Late one Saturday night in December 1888, a woman hammered on the undertaker’s door in Poplar, East London, shouting that she had something to tell Mr Chivers.

Courtain Thomas Chivers was the coroner’s officer in the East End, well known for his kindliness and patience as well as his long experience of the city’s most brutal crimes. He was responsible for inspecting every corpse and giving evidence to the coroner.

Two days earlier, Mr Chivers had examined the corpse of a 29-year-old prostitute known as Drunken Lizzie, and pointed out what the police had missed — that her death was not caused by alcohol. It was murder.

The sensation was caused by his discovery.

Rose Mylett was the real-name of Lizzie Mylett. She was killed by a serial killer in the East End. . . Jack the Ripper.

'Whether Thomas Chivers ever guessed at the identity of the real Jack the Ripper, we shall never know'

“Whether Thomas Chivers could have guessed the identity Jack The Ripper is a mystery that we will never be able to determine”

A newspaper cartoon from the era depicts the sad death of Rose Mylett AKA 'drunken Lizzie' in 1888

An 1888 newspaper cartoon depicts Rose Mylett’s sad passing AKA “drunken Lizzie” in 1888.

The woman who knocked on Mr Chivers’ door did not dare go to the police with what she knew. A prostitute herself (or, as the newspapers of the time said, ‘an unfortunate’), she feared arrest for street-walking.

But the coroner’s officer was known to be a fair man and a trustworthy friend to the Cockney poor.

Thomas Chivers, (who rarely used Courtain as his first name because it was difficult to spell), is also my ancestor. He was also my three-times great grandfather, or to put it another manner, the great grandad of his maternal grandmother. She remembers meeting him often when she was a small girl back in the 1920s.

C. T. Chivers was one of the many things I found while looking into Christmas tree information. What I found set me off on a fascinating chain of discoveries, which led me to perhaps London’s greatest unsolved murder case.

Discovery of a victim of Jack the Ripper, Whitechapel, London,1888 - engraving of Fortune Louis Meaulle (1844-1901)

Discoverion of Jack the Ripper’s victim, Whitechapel (London,1888) – Engraving of Fortune Louis Meaulle (1844-19001)

The ‘unfortunate’ woman at the door of 12 High Street, Poplar, on Saturday, December 22, said her name was Alice Graves. Her Spitalfields accommodations were shared with Drunken Lizzie and her seven-year old son.

The two women were at work on Limehouse’s Commercial Road, in the early hours of December 20th.

Alice wanted Mr Chivers to know that she had seen her friend there at about 2.30am — less than two hours before the woman’s body was found in Clarke’s Yard in Poplar, about a mile-and-a-half away.

‘Lizzie was the worse for drink,’ Alice said: so drunk, in fact, that she could barely stand. Her companions were two men who were heading towards East India Dock Road. She was wearing a hat, which the police — Detective Sergeants Duck and Bradshaw of K Division — later found in a nearby front garden.

Initial police investigations dismissed the death of her as an accident. It was due to a blackout from drinking on a freezing night.

When Mr Chivers arrived at the scene at nine o’clock in the morning, his keen eye saw what Duck and Bradshaw missed. The faint, slightly discolored line was about one-eighth of an inch in depth and ran around her neck from her spine to her left ear.

Jack the Ripper is depicted in this contemporary illustration, carrying out one of his notorious slashing attacks (From the Police Gazette)

This contemporary illustration shows Jack the Ripper performing one of his notorious slashing assaults (From the Police Gazette).

Bruises in the shape of a man’s thumbs and fingers were also just visible, as were small scratches — probably caused by the woman’s own fingernails as she struggled to break the killer’s grip.

The rope she was using to garrot her was as thin as string. She died in a matter of seconds, without the usual signs that indicate strangulation (clenched fists or protruding tongue)

Initial reactions by the police to his discovery were not encouraging. A doctor already gave the body a brief examination but failed to detect the danger. The body was then examined by another medic, who in turn, consulted another. All four of them agreed that Thomas Chivers was guilty of murder by the end.

On Christmas Eve of four days later, the Star newspaper made the connection between her murder and the Whitechapel killings. ‘The Rope Before The Knife’, screamed its headline, over a story that suggested for the first time that the Ripper killed his victims with a garrotte.

In every other case, he cut the women’s throats after they were dead, while stripping and mutilating their bodies.

Mary Ann 'Polly' Nichols, 42, is generally thought to be Jack the Ripper's first victim on August 31, 1888

According to most, Jack the Ripper killed Mary Ann Polly Nichols 42 on August 31, 1888.

Today, most Ripperologists agree that Rose Mylett was the fifth victim of London’s most notorious serial killer, and that he was probably disturbed before he could butcher her corpse. Thomas Chivers discovered a valuable clue to the murderer’s methods, though the police were never able to catch the Ripper and his identity remains disputed.

The death of Drunken Lizzie was just one of 60,000 that Mr Chivers investigated during half a century as the East London coroner’s officer.

‘Dark tragedies of all kinds have not upset his cheerful temper,’ reported the Sunday Post when he retired in 1921, aged 77.

‘A happy smile, an ever-ready snuff box, a strict sense of duty and punctuality, and, above all, a kindly and sympathetic manner.

‘His experiences embrace thousands of strange tragedies on the river, the murders of seamen in dockside dens, revolver frays between police and anarchists, the mysterious deaths of Chinamen and Lascars who never returned from shore leave to their boats, factory explosions and fires in all the dingy ways of the East End.’

He enjoyed telling stories and entertaining reporters with some of his most disturbing cases.

Annie Chapman, 47, is considered to have been the Ripper's second victim during his reign of terror in Whitechapel, east London

Annie Chapman (47) is believed to be the Ripper’s second victim in his terror reign at Whitechapel.

His 32-year-old age, after a sea disaster, was one of the most difficult.

A boat, called the Franconia from Hamburg, was seen off the Kent coast. It was pushed into the side by the Strathclyde steamship bound for Bombay, which was heading from Glasgow.

The Strathclyde had 23 passengers and 47 crew. It was badly holed and began to sink immediately. With 15 women passengers, the first lifeboat was lowered but it was swept by waves and lost control.

While the crew worked at the ropes to hold the lifeboat in place, the Franconia skipped away and continued on its way.

The bodies of six people and one woman were recovered from the waters. They were then taken to Poplar mortuary where Thomas Chivers assembled enough facts to identify them. The 13-day inquest ended with no prosecution of the German Captain for Manslaughter.

A single piece of evidence was enough to solve another drowning case. A woman’s body was pulled from the Thames, so badly decomposed that Mr Chivers estimated it had been in the water for a year.

‘The only shred of clothing on the body,’ he remembered, ‘was a fragment of crochet work around the arm. It was a piece of crochet that a woman recognized as hers. It was her daughter’s body.’

His testimony was required on many occasions in Old Bailey murder cases. Many of his stories were tragic and sad. There was a taxi driver who killed his girlfriend by hitting him with a hammer after she attempted to walk away; there was a dock worker whose mother drowned after an argument over a drink; and a coal porter whose wife died from poisoning after he took their furniture as pawns.

Swedish-born Elizabeth Stride AKA 'Long Liz', 44, was the Ripper's third victim - killed in a yard on September 30. It is thought the killer may have been disturbed before he could mutilate the victim.

The Ripper killed Elizabeth Stride, 44 (also known as Long Liz), in a backyard on September 30, after she was born in Sweden. There is speculation that the Ripper may have disturbed the victim before he was able to dismember him.

One of the oddest was Frederick White, a fishmonger, who went out on a Friday evening after Christmas 1895. White related his story to Mr Chivers. He then read it out to members of the Old Bailey jury.

White was joined by five friends at the Bell, Shoreditch. This session became a nighttime pub crawl. White went to the Spread Eagle then the Gun. Half a pint was consumed with rum and half with beer.

White and James Fitt were seen quarreling in the street. The police officer arrived and inquired about the problem. Both White and Fitt insisted they were ‘pals’. Fitt was drunk to the point that he couldn’t stand straight, according to Fitt.

The bobby saw Fitt lying unconscious on the street curb a short while later. White tried to get Fitt to stand up, but blood was dripping from his left eye.

Fitt had already died by the time that he was brought to hospital. Doctors found the stem and end of a wood pipe in Fitt’s brain.

White was interrogated and searched by police. The bowl of the pipe was found in White’s pocket.

It was impossible to decide which pipe it belonged to. White insisted it wasn’t his, and that he must have picked up the bowl when he was trying to haul his friend to his feet. Fitt’s wife told police that her husband did smoke a pipe — but only a cheap clay one.

After listening to Mr Chivers’ evidence, the jury decided Fitt probably fell face-first with the pipe in his hand and was impaled on it. White was not found guilty.

‘In my early days,’ the coroner’s officer told a reporter, ‘the East End was a wild and lawless place. We used to leave a body in the house where he or she died, and hold the inquest in the nearest public house.’

‘When the law was altered and the body had to be taken to a mortuary there was often trouble. Relatives and friends of the dead person often used to stand en masse outside the house and greet me with sticks and pokers, refusing to let the body be taken away.’ 

Jack the Ripper's fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, 46, was killed later on the same night as Stride and was brutally mutilated

Catherine Eddowes (46) was Jack the Ripper’s fourth victim. Catherine was murdered the night after Stride.

He said that pubs weren’t ideal places for hearings. Witnesses, family members, juries, and relatives often drink with each other after an inquest is over. Brawls are common after such events. Sometimes, Mr Chivers needed protection from the police.

One murderer tried to take advantage of the undertaker’s nature. Henry Wainwright owned a Whitechapel shop that sold brushes. He lived there with Elizabeth and his four children.

But he led a double life, with milliner’s assistant Harriet Lane. She had already given birth to two children with him when she was twenty-one. Harriet, Harriet’s secret family, resided in Mile End. Harriet was Mrs Percy King.

Wainwright couldn’t afford to keep two families. He moved his second family into cheaper lodgings, but that didn’t save him from going bankrupt. Harriet was drinking heavily and threatening to expose him if he didn’t leave his wife.

Wainwright decided to sell all of his furniture as an last resort in order to avoid creditors. Even then, he couldn’t afford to pay two rents, so he turned to Thomas Chivers, who had a reputation for helping families in desperate straits.

‘He came to my house in September 1874,’ said Mr Chivers, nearly 50 years later, ‘and asked if he and “his wife” could sleep there. I said he might, and he came back with the woman, Harriet Lane — whom he murdered a few days afterwards.’

Wainwright dismembered his lover and then buried him at his shop. She told her friends that she ran off to Paris along with Edward Frieake (a man who was not known by Wainwright).

Wainwright found the corpse of an ex-employee and spotted it.

Stokes observed Wainwright taking a hansom-cab to the Thames. He tried to warn two policemen, who didn’t believe him, and gave chase himself. Stokes convinced an officer to take him into custody just as the killer was going to toss the body in the Thames at London Bridge.

Wainwright told the Old Bailey that the body parts had been handed to him by a male in a pub. The man didn’t know how to dispose of the body parts so he decided to throw them in to the Thames. The jury didn’t believe him, and he was hanged in December 1875.

Thomas Chivers was shocked to hear the shocking tale. After witnessing drunken fighting and murders on the docks, he had to sometimes interview Far East sailors.

‘They would take the oath in their own peculiar manner,’ he said. ‘Most would swear to tell the truth by blowing out a candle. Their souls, they held, would go out with the candle if they lied.’

An unknown photograph which has been associated with Mary Jane Kelly, 25, who was the Ripper's final victim on November 19, 1888

A photograph unknown that is associated with Mary Jane Kelly 25 (the Ripper’s ultimate victim) on November 19, 1888

Some inquests had an almost comical aspect: ‘Once, a woman from Plumstead identified a body as that of her husband, went away, and then telephoned that her husband had just come home.’

Thomas Chivers’ unfailing good humour made him many loyal friends. One such item was described in The Daily Mail in 1900: Tom Huxley, an ailing artist who lived alone in a tenement in his own room.

Huxley was seen by Mr Chivers in the street and he became his friend. Huxley painted his portrait to repay him. From then on the undertaker kept an eye on the old man, and was saddened when he was called to Huxley’s unheated room to examine his body. It was determined that Huxley committed suicide.

A letter was sent to Mr Chivers later that week. In it was Huxley’s will, which left everything to ‘my only friend’ — Courtain Thomas Chivers. Savings at the Post Office, an annuity and shares in a building society amounted to £120, about £15,000 today.

That sum was dwarfed by the offers of advance payments for Mr Chivers’ memoirs when he retired. One publisher was ready to pay £1,000 (about £50,000 today).

My great-grandfather, who was 85 when he died in 1929, didn’t write his own life story. He preferred to regale his friends with reminiscences around the fireside — with his snuff-box in his hand. His collection of 60,000 tragic stories and grim cases must have kept him busy.

We won’t know if Jack the Ripper ever knew the truth.