Michael Keating

Witness at the inquest of the 'Pinchin Street Torso'.

A licensed shoeblack living at 1 Osborn Street, Brick Lane. Keating appeared on the second day of the inquest, 24th September 1889:

On the night of the 9th inst. between 11 and 12 o'clock, I went to sleep in the railway arch in Pinchin-street. I went there because I had not the price of my lodgings. When I went there I did not see any one, and neither did I see anything under the arch. I was not sober. I do not remember noticing anybody in particular, but there were some people about Pinchin-street when I went in. I soon fell asleep, and was not awoke during the night. The police woke me up, and when I came out of the arch I noticed the trunk of a body in the next arch. An inspector was in the act of covering it up with a sack in which I kept my blacking-box. I could not say if I was sober enough to have noticed the body if it had been there when I went in. I did not go into the railway arch in which it was found. I do not remember any one else coming into the arch in which I was, but when I woke I saw two more men coming out of the other side. I had never slept there before. I happened to be passing by, and, finding the arch open and thinking it was a quiet place, I went in to have a sleep.

Keating was taken into custody along with Richard Hawke who had also been found under the railway arches in Pinchin Street after PC William Pennett had discovered the torso.