I would live to be 103. I never imagined. For eight decades I knew. I died knowing. I died silent, an old woman in my bed. I died having seen part of the greatest evil mankind has ever produced face to face, having never whispered a word to anyone.

I began nursing Mr. Crow in 1890. How far I had come- a respectable woman, nursing in a respectable home. I wore a dual cloak of pride and self-loathing, and the latter showed itself in the presence of ladies like the housekeeper.

She led me up to the room of the patient. There he lay, Mr. Crow, a wasted man. He had made himself as they say but, he could never escape the streets where he was born, his lowly beginnings. Now, his wealth could not save him from the spectre with the scythe. He coughed fitfully. In the months I nursed him, he never rested. He was always twitching. Always trying to get out of bed. He did not want to die.

 Once, he looked at me as I was readying to change his bedsheets. He said something, something garbled.

“Whitechapel,” he said “Whitechapel.”

The housemaid looked at me quizzically. I shrugged. The woman I was pretending to be had never seen the streets of Whitechapel.  He talked in his sleep. He said “Mary” and I thought he might be praying. Later, it was “Polly” and then “Catherine”.

He would fix me with his feverish stare, this frail little man, with dark hair and mustache.

“I can go wherever I want. It’s so easy… I hid the firsts. Nobody missed them. They’d have become whores, had they lived. Saved them from that life, I did.”

As I fed him, he would spit the food out and speak to me. “Am I still in the papers?” he once asked. “Let no one forget about me. They will forget them, but not me.”

Another time, he feverishly repeated “No shame, no shame.”

My deathwatch was a curious agony. It was as if he piled on the burden and I took it all, only to carry it all these years. I heard all the speculation, heard the theories over the years- who it might have been.

I carried the burden. I was walking evidence. Later, I felt like I was the key at the gate of Auschwitz. I felt like I was the blur between rich and poor. I felt like all the other threats that came were weak in comparison. Communism? Hippies? But I saw his face in Hitler’s- the brutal, righteous crusader, who believed his evil was the greatest good. Who would believe me, if I told?

All those days, I stayed on deathwatch. Finally, the death rattle began. His breathing came ragged and he twitched, fighting.  In a single, violent breath, he spoke his last words.

“Just one more…” he sighed. “One more time and I would sleep.”