Emma Elizabeth Smith - Life and Murder

Life and Murder

Smith's life prior to her murder in 1888 remains mysterious. Police files were gathered during the investigation, but most of these are missing, apparently taken, mislaid or discarded from the Metropolitan Police archive before the transfer of papers to the Public Record Office. In the surviving records, Inspector Edmund Reid notes a "son and daughter living in Finsbury Park area". Detective 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 death in 1888 she was living in a lodging-house at 18 George Street (since renamed Lolesworth Street), Spitalfields, in the East End of London. She was viciously assaulted at the junction of Osborn Street and Brick Lane, Whitechapel, in the early hours of Tuesday 3 April 1888, the day after the Easter Monday bank holiday. She survived the attack and, although injured, managed to walk back to her lodging house. She told the deputy keeper, Mary Russell, that she was attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager. Mrs Russell and one of the other lodgers, Annie Lee, took Smith to the London Hospital, where she was treated by house surgeon George Haslip. She fell into a coma and died the next day at 9 a.m. 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.

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, 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 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.