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hundreds yards before finding lodgings at 43 Union Street. Jean Robertson, their landlady, charged them eight shillings per week for the rent of a room but Bury considered this too expensive and, a week later, after unsuccessfully attempting to gain two shillings’ reduction, they moved out. The same day, the couple took up occupancy of a two-roomed basement flat at 113 Princes Street, an area overlooking the harbour and on a busy route into the city centre.
    Significantly, the closely built tenements were also well served by public houses and, to the delight of their owners, Bury immediately established himself as a big-drinking customer. Ellen, however, appeared only once with him, on the day after they moved into the flat, when she had a glass of port wine in one of the pubs before going home. The little Englishman would sometimes visit the same bar more than once on the same day and was happy to chat to anyone who would listen. He seemed ‘a man of means’, spoke of selling shares, and said he and his wife had moved north for the sake of Ellen’s health – an ironic comment, given the events soon to unfold. He added that they would probably return to London that August.
    The couple made an early visit to a shop operated by Mrs Marjory Smith. After buying some domestic utensils, the conversation turned to their previous life in London. When Mrs Smith asked why it was that the capital’s famous police force allowed Jack the Ripper to go unchecked, Ellen replied, ‘Oh, Jack the Ripper is quiet now.’ Bury remained silent.
    Bury also became known to Janet Martin, who ran a general provisions store at 125 Princes Street, and around 1 p.m. on Monday, 4 February, the man who seemed to have no interest in finding a job called at the shop and asked for a length of cord. He gave no explanation why he wanted it but accepted the first piece shown, telling Mrs Martin, ‘This will do nicely.’
    Ellen Bury, the Cockney brothel maid who had inexplicably become infatuated with an alcoholic abuser whom she barely knew and who willingly travelled by ship with him to a land utterly alien to her usual way of life, was never seen alive from that day on. It is likely, however, that she was heard. At around three o’clock the following morning, neighbour David Duncan was awake in his bedroom when he heard three screams of ‘desperate distress’ coming from the Bury’s flat thirty yards away. The terrified shrieks ended as abruptly as they began and he heard no more, though he lay in bed listening intently for the next half-hour. Duncan seems to have been the only one who heard anything. Even his landlady, who shared the same bedroom, slept through the quick, anguished screams.
    In the following days Bury was seldom out of the local pubs – his favourite, the Prince Regent Bar, in particular – and none of those he shared a drink with detected anything different about the Englishman who never worked but who always had money for ale. As usual, he was more than willing to buy a drink for anyone he struck up a conversation with, although, as always, he unaccountably declined the same offers in return. Sometimes, he made casual references to Ellen, more than once even taking away a bottle of bitter beer which he said was for her, and no one suspected she wasn’t sitting at home nearby as usual.
    On Sunday, 10 February, six days after his wife was last seen alive and just twenty-two days after they first had set foot in Dundee, Bury embarked on a course of action that was to guarantee him a notoriety to extend for all of the following century and into the next and see his name echo round the world.
    Early that day he called at the home of David Walker, a neighbour who lived round the corner in Crescent Lane, and seemed anxious to talk. They had first met several days earlier in the Prince Regent when Walker, a painter, had been working there. Walker was in bed when Bury called and he tossed a newspaper to his visitor, jokingly saying