George Bagster Phillips

He came to prominence during the murders of Jack the Ripper when he conducted or attended autopsies on the bodies of four of the victims, namely Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.

His manners were charming: he was immensely popular both with the police and the public, and he was highly skilled"[1] Phillips lived at 2 Spital Square in Whitechapel.

[2] Phillips is first mentioned in the British national press in The Times of 24 May 1866, when he attended on James Ashe, who had been cut with a knife and wounded by his brother-in-law, Patrick O'Donnell, a 20-year-old journeyman tailor.

[3] Later, in 1870, Phillips was called to the Stepney police station concerning a case of child abuse, when he was asked to examine a 7-year-old girl and the man charged with her sexual assault.

He diagnosed both as suffering from gonorrhea and also found that the young girl had a vaginal rupture, which Phillips said was an indication of "violence of some kind".

The Times referred to Phillips again on 6 March 1882 when Mary Ann Macarthy, aged 17 and living in a common lodging-house in Spitalfields, was charged on remand with feloniously cutting and wounding Henry Connor, by stabbing him with a knife.

However, eyewitnesses claimed that the yard was empty at that time, and at the inquest Coroner Wynne Baxter, who had no medical background, chose the witness testimony over the doctors' opinions and argued that the time of death was 5.30 a.m.[6] After examining Chapman's body he concluded that her reported recent ill health was due to tuberculosis.

'Obviously', Phillips wrote, 'the work was that of an expert- or one, at least, who had such knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs with one sweep of the knife'.

[7] Phillips was called to Dutfield's Yard in Berner Street at 1.20 a.m. on Sunday, 30 September 1888, to examine the body of Elizabeth Stride.

At her inquest, held on 3 October 1888, he reported: "The body was lying on the near side, with the face turned toward the wall, the head up the yard and the feet toward the street.

The throat was deeply gashed and there was an abrasion of the skin about one and a half inches in diameter, apparently stained with blood, under her right arm.

However, because of his familiarity with the Ripper's previous victims, Phillips was called by the Metropolitan Police to take part in Eddowes's autopsy.

At the inquest, Phillips reported: "I was called by the police on Friday morning at eleven o'clock, and on proceeding to Miller's Court, which I entered at 11.15.

Having ascertained that probably it was advisable that no entrance should be made into the room at that time, I remained until about 1.30p.m., when the door was broken open by McCarthy, under the direction of Superintendent Arnold.

Deceased had only an under-linen garment upon her, and by subsequent examination I am sure the body had been removed, after the injury which caused death, from that side of the bedstead which was nearest to the wooden partition previously mentioned.

Consequently, the coroner had not complied with the legal requisite that the length, breadth and depths of all wounds to the deceased must be recorded and, with conflicting evidence having been given to the inquest, the time of death had not been established.

Phillips had conferred in private with the coroner before the hearing opened, something he had wanted to do at a previous inquest but had been refused.

He believed that the minor wounds on the back of her head suggested that she was thrown violently to the ground before her throat was cut three times.

In it he was described by his assistant, Dr. Percy John Clark, as "a modest man who found self-advertising abhorrent... under a brusque, quick manner engendered by his busy life, there was a warm, kind heart, and a large number of men and women of all classes are feeling that by his death they have lost a very real friend".

In the 1988 made-for-television film Jack the Ripper starring Michael Caine, Phillips was played by actor Gerald Sim.