Poems by the New McGonagall

By Tomas Mc Rae, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, ©1988

On the Recent Ghastly Murders
in Whitechapel

By William McGonagall (his spirit) via Tomas Mc Rae

A wanted poster of 1888 (Wikimedia Commons)

In the year 1888 in London’s grim Whitechapel,

The inhabitants in great panic did grapple

With mutilation and murder of five prostitutes,

Who were immersed in poverty and all destitutes.

Early on the morning of 31^st August

Two workmen found the first victim of the killer’s lust.

They were walking through Buck’s Alley

When they found the first victim of his evil sally.

An awful sight did them appall

When they saw the body of Mary Ann Nichols laid against a wall.

Such a horrible spectacle met their gaze,

That caused them to stand in a fit of amaze.

They called for the police who arrived without delay,

And even they were forced to recoil in dismay.

For Mary Ann Nichols’s throat had been cut quite across,

And some of her internal organs removed to add to her loss.

Next upon Saturday September Eight,

Annie Chapman was discovered to have suffered a similar fate

And suffered a like mutilation,

Which shocked young and old of every class and station.

And even worse, reports did say,

The victim’s uterus had been removed and taken away.

The police investigation did not go very fine,

So a team from Scotland Yard was brought in led by Detective Inspector Aberline

To catch the man they called “Jack the Ripper”

Who murdered his victims then gutted them like a kipper.

The inhabitants of Whitechapel were now in a panic,

Oppressed by fear of this murderer manic.

The fear increased on Sunday 30^th September,

When Elizabeth Stride’s throat was cut but ere her he could dismember,

A passer-by heard her dying scream,

And The Ripper fled before he could finish his carving scheme.

But that self same night in Aldgate at Mitre Square

He murdered Catherine Eddowes, ripping her open before fleeing from there.

Taking with him her uterus and the kidney from her left hand side,

One of the letters claimed to be from Jack the Ripper (Wikimedia Commons)

When he ran away in dark foggy shadows to hide.

Each of those women had been murdered in the street,

But his final victim died in her bed his murder list to complete.

For on 9th November a debt collector was sent to collect Mary Kelly’s rent,

Which was long overdue to the landlord’s discontent.

There was no response when he knocked on her door.

So he peered through the window and recoiled in sight deplore!

Oh horrible! Oh horrible! How ghastly for to see

The gory mutilated body of Mary Kelly,

Ripped asunder on the bed

Which with her blood was covered bright red.

So away in shock the debt collector to the police fled.

“Come quickly! Oh, come fast!”, he too them said.

Inspector Aberline had seen many’s an awful sight.

But what he saw on that bloody bed filled him full of fright.

The body had been quite befouled,

By her intestines which had been disemboweled.

And poor Mary had been slashed so much apart,

The coroner could not be sure if The Ripper had taken her heart.

There were eleven murders of women at this time,

But only those five with The Ripper did police align,

A killer who shocked folk of every situation,

With deeds that disconcerted the entire British Nation.

Those unfortunate womens’ awful fates

Were even reported in The United States.

Many were the men who were suspected,

But none to the crimes could be connected.

Among chief suspects was Montague Druitt,

A lawyer and school teacher. Maybe he did do it?

For after he committed suicide in December 1888,

No more women suffered such a terrifying fate.

Or maybe it was American Doctor Tumblety,

Arrested in November 1888 for acts of gross indecency.

And when he was released on bail

He fled from Great Britain that same month without fail.

There is only one thing of which we can be certain,

Mary Kelly’s murder ran down the curtain.

On those fearful crimes in Whitechapel and Aldgate,

And the panic caused by them did rapidly abate.

Let us imagine this man so evil and vain

Hiding in Whitechapel’s dusky foggy terrain,

Holding his sharp knife, muttering with disdain,

“Degenerate harlots, you I’ll attack,

For I am the Ripper and my name is Jack!”

But! What says me The Great McGonagall?

Can I provide a solution to this mystery once for all,

Those fearful killings that for many ages,

Have baffled policemen, scholars, scientists, and sages?

Well, mayhap, 'twas an Angel of the Lord

Who looked on drunken harlots and abhorred

Their dissolute lives and gin-sodden ways

That kept them in a constant state of daze.

This divine angel to such debauched women would

Impose a lesson that all the dissolute understood.

Down to Whitechapel then this being descended

To draw the sword he should have heaven defended.

And used it as a warning to bestow

On women who to sluttishness did go.

With trial none from either judge nor jury,

Those five poor women were subject to his fury.

St Peter summoned that dark angel to his throne,

Saying, “Judge not for you have not your victims known

Who because of an unjust human society,

Were forced to lead this awful life to ease their poverty.

Those impoverished creatures that you carved

Were forced to lead this life or they’d have starved.

And so I judge YOU and would have you know

I deprive you of wings, sword and even halo

To send you underneath to Lucifer’s horde

With other Fallen Angels there to be abhorred.

Those women who you slaughtered out of hand,

Now sit forever, angels, at God’s right hand.

While you I now your sentence have to tell:

Go join your fellow evil-doers in Hell!”