Who was Jack the Ripper?

Newspaper broadsheet, September 1888.

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"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the media. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, and may have been written by a journalist in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the story. Other nicknames used for the killer at the time were "The Whitechapel Murderer" and "Leather Apron".

Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard. The "From Hell" letter, received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, included half of a preserved human kidney, supposedly from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".

Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed widespread and enduring international notoriety on the Ripper. An investigation into a series of brutal killings in Whitechapel up to 1891 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the murders of 1888, but the legend of Jack the Ripper solidified. As the murders were never solved, the legends surrounding them became a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. The term "ripperology" was coined to describe the study and analysis of the Ripper cases. There are now over one hundred theories about the Ripper's identity, and the murders have inspired multiple works of fiction.

I have just taken a look at my books, I have 14 on JTR and I still haven't worked it out

I'm guessing it's someone called Jack.

The sites of the first seven Whitechapel murders – Osborn Street (centre right), George Yard (centre left), Hanbury Street (top), Buck's Row (far right), Berner Street (bottom right), Mitre Square (bottom left), and Dorset Street (middle left).

Lane Coutell wrote:I'm guessing it's someone called Jack.

It's always possible, I suppose, but this letter- the most credible of the thousands written to the authorities- received by George Lusk of the Mile End Vigilance Committee and containing half a female kidney was unsigned:

Social conditions in London's East End in 1888 were appalling, providing an ideal killing-ground for the Ripper:

Inspector Fred Abberlline, 1888.


"Blind-man's Buff": Punch cartoon by John Tenniel (22 September 1888) criticising the police's alleged incompetence. The failure of the police to capture the killer reinforced the attitude held by radicals that the police were inept and mismanaged.

The 5 canonical Ripper victims:


Mortuary photo of Mary Ann Nichols.

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At about 23:00 on 30 August, Nichols was seen walking the Whitechapel Road; at 00:30 she was seen to leave a pub in Brick Lane, Spitalfields. An hour later she was turned out of 18 Thrawl Street as she was lacking fourpence for a bed, implying by her last words that she would soon earn the money on the street with the help of a new bonnet she had acquired. She was last seen at the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road, at 02:30, an hour before her death, by Nelly Holland. Nichols claimed she had made enough money to pay for her bed three times over, but had drunk it all away.

At about 3:40, she was found lying on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (since renamed Durward Street), Whitechapel, about 150 yards from the London Hospital and 100 yards from Blackwall Buildings,[10] by cart driver Charles Cross. Her skirt was raised. Another passing cart driver on his way to work, Robert Paul, approached and Cross pointed out the body. Cross believed her to be dead, but Paul was uncertain and thought she might be unconscious. They pulled her skirt down to cover her lower body, and went in search of a policeman. They informed PC Jonas Mizen and continued on their way to work. As Mizen was approaching the body, PC John Neil came from the opposite direction on his beat and by flashing his lantern, called a third policeman PC John Thain to the scene. As news of the murder spread, three horse slaughterers from a neighbouring knacker's yard in Winthrop Street, who had been working overnight, came to look at the body. None of the slaughterers, the police officers patrolling nearby streets, or the residents of houses alongside Buck's Row reported hearing or seeing anything suspicious before the discovery of the body.

PC Thain fetched surgeon, Dr Henry Llewellyn, who arrived at 04:00 and decided she had been dead for about 30 minutes.[12] Her throat had been slit twice from left to right and her abdomen mutilated with one deep jagged wound, several incisions across the abdomen, and three or four similar cuts on the right side caused by the same knife at least 6–8 inches (15–20 cm) long used violently and downwards. Llewellyn expressed surprise at the small amount of blood at the crime scene, "about enough to fill two large wine glasses, or half a pint at the most". His comment led to the supposition that Nichols was not killed where her body was found, but the blood from her wounds had soaked into her clothes and hair, and there was little doubt that she had been killed at the crime scene by a swift slash to the throat. Death would have been instantaneous, and the abdominal injuries, which would have taken less than five minutes to perform, were made by the murderer after she was dead. When the body was lifted a "mass of congealed blood", in PC Thain's words, lay beneath the body.

Mortuary photo of Annie Chapman.

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According to the lodging house deputy Tim Donovan and the watchman John Evans, at about 1:45 a.m. on the morning of her death, Chapman found herself without money for her lodging and went out to earn some on the street. At the inquest one of the witnesses, Mrs Elizabeth Long testified that she had seen Chapman talking to a man at about 5:30 a.m. just beyond the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Mrs Long described him as over forty, and a little taller than Chapman, of dark complexion, and of foreign, "shabby-genteel" appearance. He was wearing a deer-stalker hat and dark overcoat. If correct in her identification of Chapman, it is likely that Long was the last person to see Chapman alive besides her murderer. Chapman's body was discovered at just before 6:00 a.m. on the morning of 8 September 1888 by a resident of number 29, market porter John Davis. She was lying on the ground near a doorway in the back yard. John Richardson, the son of a resident of the house, had been in the back yard shortly before 5 a.m. to trim a loose piece of leather from his boot, and carpenter Albert Cadosch had entered the neighbouring yard at 27 Hanbury Street at about 5:30 a.m., and heard voices in the yard followed by the sound of something falling against the fence.

Two pills, which she had for a lung condition, part of a torn envelope, a piece of muslin, and a comb were recovered from the yard. Brass rings that Chapman had been wearing earlier were not recovered, either because she had pawned them or because they had been stolen. All the pawnbrokers in the area were searched for the rings without success.The envelope bore the crest of the Sussex regiment, and was briefly thought to be related to Stanley who pretended to be an army pensioner, but the clue was eliminated from the inquiry after it was later traced to Crossingham's lodging house, where Chapman had taken up the envelope for re-use as a container for her pills.The press claimed that two farthings were found in the yard, but they are not mentioned in the surviving police records. The local inspector of the Metropolitan Police Service, Edmund Reid of H Division Whitechapel, was reported as mentioning them at an inquest in 1889, and the acting Commissioner of the City Police, Major Henry Smith, mentioned them in his memoirs. Smith's memoirs, however, are unreliable and embellished for dramatic effect, and were written more than twenty years after the event. He claimed that medical students polished farthings so they could be passed off as sovereigns to unsuspecting prostitutes, and so the presence of the farthings suggested the culprit was a medical student, but the price of a prostitute in the East End was likely to be a lot less than a sovereign.

The first officer on the scene was inspector Joseph Luniss Chandler of H Division, but Chief Inspector Donald Swanson of Scotland Yard was placed in overall command on 15 September. The murder was quickly linked to similar murders in the district, particularly to that of Mary Ann Nichols a week previously. Nichols had also suffered a slash to the throat and abdominal wounds, and a blade of similar size and design had been used. Swanson reported that an "immediate and searching enquiry was made at all common lodging houses to ascertain if anyone had entered that morning with blood on his hands or clothes, or under any suspicious circumstances". The body was conveyed later that day to Whitechapel mortuary in the same police ambulance, which was a handcart just large enough for one coffin, used for Nichols by Sergeant Edward Badham. Badham was the first to testify at the subsequent inquest.

Mortuary photo of Elizabeth Stride.

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On the night of her murder, 30 September, Stride was wearing a black jacket and skirt, with a posy of a red rose in a spray of maidenhair fern or asparagus leaves. Her outfit was complemented by a black crêpe bonnet. She may have been seen with a client, a short man with a dark moustache wearing a morning suit and bowler hat, at around 11:00 p.m. near Berner Street, and again at about 11:45 p.m. with a man wearing a peaked cap. At 12:35 a.m., PC William Smith saw her with a man wearing a hard felt hat opposite the International Working Men's Educational Club, a socialist and predominantly Jewish social club, at 40 Berner Street (since renamed Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. The man was carrying a package about 18 inches (45 cm) in length.

Stride's body was discovered close to 1 a.m. on Sunday 30 September 1888 by Louis Diemschutz, the steward of the Workers' Club, in the adjacent Dutfield's Yard. Diemshutz drove into the yard with a pony and two-wheeled cart, when his horse shied. The yard was so dark that he was unable to see her body without lighting a match. With blood still flowing from a wound in her neck, it appeared that she was killed just moments before he arrived. Between 12:30 and 12:50 a.m., departing club members, who had attended a debate on "The Necessity of Socialism amongst Jews" followed by community singing, had seen nothing amiss in the yard Mrs Mortimer, who lived two doors away from the club, had stood in Berner Street to listen to the singing at about the same time, and had not seen anyone enter the yard. Mortimer did report seeing a man with a shiny black bag race past, which was reported widely in the press, but one of the club's members, Leon Goldstein, identified himself as the man Mortimer had seen and he was eliminated from the inquiry.

The police searched the remaining members of the club, and the adjacent properties, and interviewed the residents of the area. A witness named Israel Schwartz reported seeing Stride being attacked and thrown to the ground outside Dutfield's Yard at around 12:45 a.m. Her attacker may have called out "Lipski" to a second man standing nearby, which was thought to be an antisemitic taunt derived from the name of a notorious poisoner, Israel Lipski. Schwartz did not testify at the inquest on Stride, possibly because he was Hungarian and spoke very little if any English. Ripper investigator Stephen Knight found Schwartz's statement in case files in the 1970s. At about the same time, Stride, or someone matching her description, was seen by James Brown rejecting the advances of a stoutish man slightly taller than her in the adjacent street to Berner Street (Fairclough Street). A note in the margin of the Home Office files on the case points out that there was time for Stride to meet another man between her death and the latest sightings of her.The steward Diemshutz later said that he believed that the killer was still in the yard as he drove into it.

No money was found on Stride's body, so it is possible that her night's takings were stolen from her, either in the attack seen by Schwartz, or by her murderer. Either way she seems to have gone into the yard with her murderer alive, presumably on the basis that he was a client.

Stride's murder occurred in the midst of the Jack the Ripper scare, when a series of brutal attacks against prostitutes were blamed on a single attacker, known as Jack the Ripper. However, unlike at least six other victims, who had abdominal injuries in addition to a slash across the neck, she had no mutilations beyond her slit throat. The murder of Stride shares similarities to the pattern of Ripper killings, such as date, time, type of site, characteristics of the victim and the method of murder. It is possible that the killer was interrupted before he had the opportunity to mutilate the body. Catharine Eddowes was murdered within walking distance less than an hour later, and both Stride and Eddowes lived in Flower and Dean Street. The deaths of Eddowes and Stride sent London into a panic, as it was the first time that two murders ascribed to the Ripper had occurred in one night.

Mortuary photo of Catherine Eddowes after post-mortem stitching.

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At 8.30 p.m. on Saturday 29 September, Eddowes was found lying drunk in the road on Aldgate High Street by PC Louis Robinson. She was taken into custody and then to Bishopsgate police station, where she was detained, giving the name "Nothing", until she was sober enough to leave at 1 a.m. on the morning of 30 September. On her release, she gave her name and address as "Mary Ann Kelly of 6 Fashion Street". When leaving the station, instead of turning right to take the shortest route to her home in Flower and Dean Street, she turned left towards Aldgate. She was last seen alive at 1.35 a.m. by three witnesses, Joseph Lawende, Joseph Hyam Levy and Harry Harris, who had just left a club on Duke Street. She was standing talking with a man at the entrance to Church Passage, which led south-west from Duke Street to Mitre Square along the south wall of the Great Synagogue of London. Only Lawende could furnish a description of the man, whom he described as a fair-moustached man wearing a navy jacket, peaked cloth cap, and red scarf. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson intimated in his report that Lawende's identification of the woman as Eddowes was doubtful. He wrote that Lawende had said that some clothing of the deceased's that he was shown resembled that of the woman he saw—"which was black ... that was the extent of his identity [sic]". A patrolling policeman, PC James Harvey, walked down Church Passage from Duke Street very shortly afterwards but his beat took him back down Church Passage to Duke Street, without entering the square.

At 1.45 a.m., Eddowes's mutilated body was found in the south-west corner of Mitre Square by the square's beat policeman PC Edward Watkins. Watkins said that he entered the square at 1.44 a.m, having previously been there at 1.30 a.m. He called for assistance at a tea warehouse in the square, where night watchman George James Morris, who was an ex-policeman, had noticed nothing unusual. Neither had another watchman (George Clapp) at 5 Mitre Square or an off-duty policeman (Richard Pearse) at 3 Mitre Square.

Eddowes was killed and mutilated in the square between 1.35 and 1.45 a.m. Police surgeon Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown, who arrived after 2:00 a.m., said of the scene:

The body was on its back, the head turned to left shoulder. The arms by the side of the body as if they had fallen there. Both palms upwards, the fingers slightly bent. A thimble was lying off the finger on the right side. The clothes drawn up above the abdomen. The thighs were naked. Left leg extended in a line with the body. The abdomen was exposed. Right leg bent at the thigh and knee.

The bonnet was at the back of the head—great disfigurement of the face. The throat cut. Across below the throat was a neckerchief. ... The intestines were drawn out to a large extent and placed over the right shoulder—they were smeared over with some feculent matter. A piece of about two feet was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and the left arm, apparently by design. The lobe and auricle of the right ear were cut obliquely through. There was a quantity of clotted blood on the pavement on the left side of the neck round the shoulder and upper part of the arm, and fluid blood-coloured serum which had flowed under the neck to the right shoulder, the pavement sloping in that direction.

Body was quite warm. No death stiffening had taken place. She must have been dead most likely within the half hour. We looked for superficial bruises and saw none. No blood on the skin of the abdomen or secretion of any kind on the thighs. No spurting of blood on the bricks or pavement around. No marks of blood below the middle of the body. Several buttons were found in the clotted blood after the body was removed. There was no blood on the front of the clothes. There were no traces of recent connection.

Brown conducted a post-mortem that afternoon, noting:

After washing the left hand carefully, a bruise the size of a sixpence, recent and red, was discovered on the back of the left hand between the thumb and first finger. A few small bruises on right shin of older date. The hands and arms were bronzed. No bruises on the scalp, the back of the body, or the elbows. ... The cause of death was haemorrhage from the left common carotid artery. The death was immediate and the mutilations were inflicted after death ... There would not be much blood on the murderer. The cut was made by someone on the right side of the body, kneeling below the middle of the body. ... The peritoneal lining was cut through on the left side and the left kidney carefully taken out and removed. ... I believe the perpetrator of the act must have had considerable knowledge of the position of the organs in the abdominal cavity and the way of removing them. The parts removed would be of no use for any professional purpose. It required a great deal of knowledge to have removed the kidney and to know where it was placed. Such a knowledge might be possessed by one in the habit of cutting up animals. I think the perpetrator of this act had sufficient time ... It would take at least five minutes. ... I believe it was the act of one person.

Police physician Thomas Bond, disagreed with Brown's assessment of the killer's skill level. Bond's report to police stated: "In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge. In my opinion he does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or any person accustomed to cut up dead animals." Local surgeon Dr George William Sequeira, who was the first doctor at the scene, and City medical officer William Sedgwick Saunders, who was also present at the autopsy, also thought that the killer lacked anatomical skill and did not seek particular organs. In addition to the abdominal wounds, the murderer had cut Eddowes's face: across the bridge of the nose, on both cheeks, and through the eyelids of both eyes. The tip of her nose and part of one ear had been cut off. The Royal London Hospital on Whitechapel Road preserves some crime scene drawings and plans of the Mitre Square murder by the City Surveyor Frederick Foster; they were first brought to public attention in 1966 by Francis Camps, Professor of Forensic Medicine at London University. Based on his analysis of the surviving documents, Camps concluded that "the cuts shown on the body could not have been done by an expert."

The Eddowes inquest was opened on 4 October by Samuel F. Langham, coroner for the City of London. A house-to-house search was conducted but nothing suspicious was discovered. Brown stated his belief that Eddowes was killed by a slash to the throat as she lay on the ground, and then mutilated.

Wasn't Queen Victoria a suspect? Or am I confusing her with Florence Nightingale?

Police photo of Mary Jane Kelly.


Police photo of parts of the victim.

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When drunk, Kelly would be heard singing Irish songs; in this state, she would often become quarrelsome and even abusive to those around her, which earned her the nickname "Dark Mary." McCarthy said "she was a very quiet woman when sober but noisy when in drink."[10] Barnett first met Kelly in April 1887. They agreed to live together on their second meeting the following day.[12] In early 1888 they both moved into 13 Miller's Court, a furnished single room at the back of 26 Dorset Street, Spitalfields. It was a single twelve-foot square room, with a bed, three tables and a chair. Above the fireplace hung a print of "The Fisherman's Widow". Kelly's doorkey was lost, so she bolted and unbolted the door from outside by putting a hand through a broken window beside the door. A German neighbour, Julia Venturney, claimed Kelly had broken the window when drunk. Barnett worked as a fish porter at Billingsgate Fish Market, but when he fell out of regular employment and tried to earn money as a market porter, Kelly turned to prostitution again. A quarrel ensued over Kelly's sharing of the room with another prostitute who Barnett knew only as "Julia" and he left on 30 October, more than a week before her death, while continuing to visit Kelly.

Barnett visited Kelly for the last time between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. on 8 November. He found her in the company of Maria Harvey, a friend of hers, and Harvey and Barnett left at about the same time. Barnett returned to his lodging house, where he played cards with other residents until falling asleep at about 12:30.

Fellow Miller's Court resident and prostitute, Mary Ann Cox, who described herself as " a widow and unfortunate", reported seeing Kelly returning home drunk in the company of a stout ginger-haired man wearing a bowler hat and carrying a can of beer at about 11:45 p.m. Cox and Kelly wished each other goodnight. Kelly went into her room with the man and then started singing the song "A Violet I Plucked from Mother's Grave When a Boy." She was still singing when Cox went out at midnight, and when she returned an hour later at 1:00. Elizabeth Prater had the room above Kelly's and when she went to bed at 1:30, the singing had stopped.

Labourer George Hutchinson, who knew Kelly, reported that she met him at about 2:00 a.m. and asked him for a loan of sixpence. He claimed to be broke and that as Kelly went on her way she was approached by a man of "Jewish appearance". Hutchinson later gave the police an extremely detailed description of the man right down to the colour of his eyelashes despite it being the middle of a dark winter night. He reported that he overheard them talking in the street opposite the court where Kelly was living; Kelly complained of losing her handkerchief, and the man gave her a red one of his own. Hutchinson claimed that Kelly and the man headed for her room, that he followed them, and that he saw neither one of them again, laying off his watch at about 2:45. Hutchinson's statement appears to be partly corroborated by laundress Sarah Lewis, who reported seeing a man watching the entrance to Miller's Court as she passed into it at about 2:30 to spend the night with some friends, the Keylers. Hutchinson claimed that he was suspicious of the man because although Kelly seemed to know him, his opulent appearance made him seem very unusual in that neighbourhood, but only reported this to the police after the inquest on Kelly had been hastily concluded. Abberline, the detective in charge of the investigation, thought Hutchinson's information was important and sent him out with officers to see if he could see the man again. Hutchinson's name does not appear again in the existing police records, and so it is not possible to say with certainty whether his evidence was ultimately dismissed, disproven, or corroborated. In his memoirs Walter Dew discounts Hutchinson on the basis that his sighting may have been on a different day, and not the morning of the murder. Robert Anderson, head of the CID, later claimed that the only witness who got a good look at the killer was Jewish. Hutchinson was not a Jew, and thus not that witness. Some modern scholars have suggested that Hutchinson was the Ripper himself, trying to confuse the police with a false description, but others suggest he may have just been an attention seeker who made up a story he hoped to sell to the press.

Cox returned home again at about 3:00. She reported hearing no sound and seeing no light from Kelly's room. Elizabeth Prater, who was woken by a kitten walking over her neck, and Sarah Lewis both reported hearing a faint cry of "Murder!" at about 4:00 a.m., but did not react because they reported that it was common to hear such cries in the East End. She claimed not to have slept and to have heard people moving in and out of the court throughout the night. She thought she heard someone leaving the residence at about 5:45 a.m. Prater did leave at 5:30 a.m., to go to the Ten Bells public house for a drink of rum, and saw nothing suspicious.

Murder

On the morning of 9 November 1888, the day of the annual Lord Mayor's Day celebrations, Kelly's landlord John McCarthy sent his assistant, ex-soldier Thomas Bowyer, to collect the rent. Kelly was six weeks behind on her payments, owing 29 shillings. Shortly after 10:45 a.m., Bowyer knocked on her door but received no response. He reached through the crack in the window, pushed aside a coat being used as a curtain and peered inside—discovering Kelly's horribly mutilated corpse lying on the bed.

The Manchester Guardian of 10 November 1888 reported that Sgt Edward Badham accompanied Inspector Walter Beck to the site of 13 Miller's Court after they were both notified of Kelly's murder by a frantic Thomas Bowyer. Beck told the inquest that he was the first police officer at the scene and Badham may have accompanied him, but there are no official records to confirm Badham being with him. Edward Badham was on duty at Commercial Street police station on the evening of 12 November 1888. The inquest into the death of Mary Kelly had been completed earlier that day, when around 6 p.m. George Hutchinson arrived at the station to give his initial statement to Badham.

The wife of a local lodging-house deputy, Caroline Maxwell, claimed to have seen Kelly alive at about 8:30 on the morning of the murder, though she admitted to only meeting her once or twice before;moreover, her description did not match that of those who knew Kelly more closely. Maurice Lewis, a tailor, reported seeing Kelly at about 10:00 that same morning in a pub. Both statements were dismissed by the police since they did not fit the accepted time of death; moreover, they could find no one else to confirm the reports. Maxwell may have either mistaken someone else for Kelly, or mixed up the day she had seen her. Such confusion was used as a plot device in the graphic novel From Hell (and subsequent movie adaptation).

The scene was attended by Superintendent Thomas Arnold and Inspector Edmund Reid from Whitechapel division, as well as Frederick Abberline and Robert Anderson from Scotland Yard. Arnold had the room broken into at 1:30 p.m. after the possibility of tracking the murderer from the room with bloodhounds was dismissed as impractical. A fire fierce enough to melt the solder between a kettle and its spout had burnt in the grate, apparently fuelled with clothing. Inspector Abberline thought Kelly's clothes were burnt by the murderer to provide light, as the room was otherwise only dimly lit by a single candle.

Dr Thomas Bond and Dr George Bagster Phillips examined the body. Phillips and Bond timed her death to about 12 hours before the examination. Phillips suggested that the extensive mutilations would have taken two hours to perform,[45] and Bond noted that rigor mortis set in as they were examining the body, indicating that death occurred between 2 and 8:00 a.m. Bond's notes read:

The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across the abdomen. The right arm was slightly abducted from the body and rested on the mattress. The elbow was bent, the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk and the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubes.
The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.

The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the left side of the body. The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table.

The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, and on the floor beneath was a pool of blood covering about two feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed and in a line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in several places.

The face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.

The neck was cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae, the fifth and sixth being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck showed distinct ecchymosis. The air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.

Both breasts were more or less removed by circular incisions, the muscle down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs were cut through and the contents of the thorax visible through the openings.

The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation, and part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin fascia, and muscles as far as the knee.
The left calf showed a long gash through skin and tissues to the deep muscles and reaching from the knee to five inches above the ankle. Both arms and forearms had extensive jagged wounds.

The right thumb showed a small superficial incision about one inch long, with extravasation of blood in the skin, and there were several abrasions on the back of the hand moreover showing the same condition.
On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung was broken and torn away. The left lung was intact. It was adherent at the apex and there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substances of the lung there were several nodules of consolidation.
The pericardium was open below and the heart absent. In the abdominal cavity there was some partly digested food of fish and potatoes, and similar food was found in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines.

Phillips believed that Kelly was killed by a slash to the throat and the mutilations performed afterwards.Bond stated in a report that the knife used was about an inch wide and at least six inches long, but did not believe that the murderer had any medical training or knowledge. He wrote:

In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge. In my opinion he does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or a person accustomed to cut up dead animals.

Her body was taken to the mortuary in Shoreditch rather than the one in Whitechapel, which meant that the inquest was opened by the coroner for North East Middlesex, Dr Roderick Macdonald, MP, instead of Wynne Edwin Baxter, the coroner who handled many of the other Whitechapel murders. The speed of the inquest was criticised in the press; Macdonald heard the inquest in a single day at Shoreditch Town Hall on 12 November. She was officially identified by Barnett, who said he recognised her by "the ear and the eyes", and McCarthy was also certain the body was Kelly's. Her death certificate was registered on 17 November, naming her "Marie Jeanette Kelly otherwise Davies".

Theories

On 10 November, Dr Bond wrote a report linking Kelly's murder with four previous ones—those of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine Eddowes—and providing a likely profile of the murderer.[ On the same day, the government offered a pardon for "any accomplice, not being the person who contrived or actually committed the murder, who shall give such information and evidence as shall lead to the discovery and conviction of the murderer or murderers". Despite the offer, and a massive police investigation, no-one was ever charged or tried for the murders. No similar murder was committed for the next six months, as a result of which the police investigation was gradually wound down. Kelly is generally considered to be the Ripper's final victim, and it is assumed that the crimes ended because of the culprit's death, imprisonment, institutionalisation, or emigration.

The mutilation of Kelly's corpse was the most savage of the Whitechapel murders, probably because the murderer had more time to commit his atrocities in a private room rather than in the street. Her state of undress, and some folded clothes on a chair, have led to suggestions that she undressed herself before lying down on the bed, which would indicate that she was killed by someone she knew, by someone she believed to be a client, or when she was asleep, or insensible from drink.

Abberline questioned Kelly's boyfriend, Joe Barnett, for four hours after her murder, and his clothes were examined for bloodstains, but he was then released without charge. A century after the murder, authors Paul Harrison and Bruce Paley proposed he killed Kelly in a jealous rage, or because she scorned him, and suggested that he committed the other murders to scare Kelly off the streets and out of prostitution. Other authors suggest Barnett killed Kelly only, and mutilated her body to make it look like a Ripper murder. Abberline's investigation appears to have exonerated him.[64] Other acquaintances of Kelly's put forward as her murderer include her landlord John McCarthy and her former boyfriend Joseph Fleming.

Writer Mark Daniel proposed that Kelly's murderer was a religious maniac, who killed Kelly as part of a ritual sacrifice, and that the fire in the grate was not to provide light but was used to make a burnt offering. William Stewart proposed in 1939 that Kelly was killed by a deranged midwife, dubbed "Jill the Ripper", who Kelly had engaged to perform an abortion. According to Stewart, the murderess burnt her own clothes in the grate because they were bloodstained and made her escape wearing Kelly's clothes. This, he suggested, was why Mrs Maxwell had claimed to see Kelly the morning after the murder—she had seen the killer dressed in Kelly's clothes instead.[67] However, the medical reports, which were not available when Stewart constructed his theory, make no mention of a pregnancy, and the theory is entirely based on speculation.

A small minority of modern authors consider it possible that Kelly was not a victim of the same killer as the other Whitechapel murders. At an assumed age of around 25, she was younger than the other canonical victims, all of whom were in their 40s. The mutilations inflicted on her were far more extensive than those on other victims, but she was also the only one killed in the privacy of a room instead of outdoors. Her murder was separated by five weeks from the previous killings.

There was a delay in the police entering her room after Bowyer had reported the murder. Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had issued an instruction that if there was another murder, nobody was to disturb the scene until he arrived to take charge of the investigation. Warren, however, had resigned as Commissioner the previous night; not knowing this, the police waited until about 12.45 - two hours after Bowyer's discovery — before entering the room when Warren's resignation was reported to them. As widely published in the newspapers at the time, Warren had been considering using bloodhounds to try to track the killer and did not want anyone disturbing the scene of any Ripper crime until dogs could be brought in.

precinct14 wrote:Wasn't Queen Victoria a suspect?

The "illegitimate-royal-heir-threatens-the-future-of-the-monarchy/Masonic conspiracy" theory was the 1970's creation of literary hoaxer Joseph Sickert who told his tall tale to East London Advertiser journalist Stephen Knight who wrote a book promulgating this entertaining urban myth:



When Kight subsequently died of a brain tumour, this merely fuelled the conspiracy theoty: obviously, he'd been bumped off by the Masons.

Wiki:

Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution is a book written by Stephen Knight first published in 1976. It proposed a solution to five murders in Victorian London that were blamed on an unidentified serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".

In an attempt to solve the mystery, Knight presented an elaborate conspiracy theory involving the British royal family, freemasonry and the painter Walter Sickert. He concluded that the victims were murdered to cover up a secret marriage between the heir to the throne, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and Annie Elizabeth Crook, a working class girl. There are many facts that contradict Knight's theory, and his main source, Joseph Gorman (also known as Joseph Sickert), later retracted the story and admitted to the press that it was a hoax. Most scholars dismiss the theory as a fantasy, and the book's conclusion is now widely discredited.

Nevertheless, the book was popular and commercially successful, going through 20 editions. It was the basis for the From Hell graphic novel and film, as well as other dramatisations, and has influenced crime fiction writers, such as Patricia Cornwell and Anne Perry.







...and the hoary (sic) old chestnut is the theory presented by the bloke who conducts the Jack the Ripper tour from outside my station, to the ghoulish delectation of visiting thrill-seekers.

THE MURDER SITES:

1. 'Polly' Nichols- Buck's Row (now Durward Street):


Buck's Row, 1888.


Contemporary illustration of the murder site.


Discovery of the body by the police (two men walking to work had already chanced upon the body independently and gone to summon help).

2. Annie Chapman- Hanbury Street:


Street plan, 1894.


Contemporary illustration of 29 Hanbury Street on 8 September, 1888.


Back steps of 29 Hanbury Street. Annie's mutilated body was discovered between the steps and the fence.

3. Liz Stride- Berner (now Henriques) Street:


Street plan, 1873.


Berner Street 1909. The cart wheel sign indicates the entrance to Dutfields Yard where Liz's body was discovered.


The discovery of the body.

4. Kate Eddowes- Mitre Square:


Street plan, 1888.


Contemporary illustration. X marks the spot.


The discovery of the body.

5. Mary Kelly- Dorset (now Duval) Street:


Street plan showing location of Miller's Court, Dorset Street, 1888.


Mary's room. 13 Miller's Court, Dorset Street, 1888.


Contemporary illustration.


Sketch of Mary Kelly's room from Reynold's News, November 1888.

Dr. Bond's Post Mortem on Mary Kelly

This post-mortem report was written by Dr. Thomas Bond after he examined the remains of Mary Jane Kelly. The report was lost until 1987, when it was returned anonymously to Scotland Yard.



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Position of body

The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle & lying across the abdomen. the right arm was slightly abducted from the body & rested on the mattress, the elbow bent & the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk & the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubes.

The whole of the surface of the abdomen & thighs was removed & the abdominal Cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds & the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.

The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus & Kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the Rt foot, the Liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side & the s pleen by the left side of the body. The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table.

The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, & on the floor beneath was a pool of blood covering about 2 feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed & in a line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in a number of spearate splashes.

Postmortem examination

The face was gashed in all directions the nose cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched & cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.

The neck was cut through the skin & other tissues right down to the vertebrae the 5th & 6th being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck showed distinct ecchymosis.

The air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.

Both breasts were removed by more or less circular incisions, the muscles down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the 4th, 5th & 6th ribs were cut through & the contents of the thorax visible through the openings.

The skin & tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation & part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin, fascia & muscles as far as the knee.

The left calf showed a long gash through skin & tissues to the deep muscles & reaching from the knee to 5 ins above the ankle.

Both arms & forearms had extensive & jagged wounds.

The right thumb showed a small superficial incision about 1 in long, with extravasation of blood in the skin & there were several abrasions on the back of the hand moreover showing the same condition.

On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung was broken & torn away.

The left lung was intact: it was adherent at the apex & there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substaces of the lung were several nodules of consolidation.

The Pericardium was open below & the Heart absent.

In the abdominal cavity was some partially digested food of fish & potatoes & similar food was found in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines.

The Macnaghten Memoranda


Written in response to the Sun's incendiary reports that a Thomas Cutbush (who was brought in for stabbing young ladies in the rear) was Jack the Ripper, Macnaghten furnished what is now considered to be one of the most important documents to have survived the years. They are reproduced, in full, below.

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Macnaghten Memoranda


Confidential

The case referred to in the sensational story told in 'The Sun' in its issue of 13th inst, & following dates, is that of Thomas Cutbush who was arraigned at the London County Sessions in April 1891 on a charge of maliciously wounding Florence Grace Johnson, and attempting to wound Isabella Fraser Anderson in Kennington. He was found to be insane, and sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty's Pleasure.

This Cutbush, who lived with his mother and aunt at 14 Albert Street, Kennington, escaped from the Lambeth Infirmary, (after he had been detained only a few hours, as a lunatic) at noon on 5th March 1891. He was rearrested on 9th idem. A few weeks before this, several cases of stabbing, or jabbing, from behind had occurred in the vicinity, and a man named Colicott was arrested, but subsequently discharged owing to faulty identification. The cuts in the girl's dresses made by Colicott were quite different to the cut(s) made by Cutbush (when he wounded Miss Johnson) who was no doubt influenced by a wild desire of morbid imitation. Cutbush's antecedents were enquired into by C.Insp (now Supt.) Chris by Inspector Hale, and by P.S. McCarthy C.I.D. -- (the last named officer had been specially employed in Whitechapel at the time of the murders there,) -- and it was ascertained that he was born, and had lived, in Kennington all his life. His father died when he was quite young and he was always a 'spoilt' child. He had been employed as a clerk and traveller in the Tea trade at the Minories, and subsequently cavassed for a Directory in the East End, during which time he bore a good character. He apparently contracted syphilis about 1888, and, -- since that time, -- led an idle and useless life. His brain seems to have become affected, and he believed that people were trying to poison him. He wrote to Lord Grimthorpe, and others, -- and also to the Treasury, -- complaining of Dr Brooks, of Westminster Bridge Road, whom he threatened to shoot for having supplied him with bad medicines. He is said to have studied medical books by day, and to have rambled about at night, returning frequently with his clothes covered with mud; but little reliance could be placed on the statements made by his mother or his aunt, who both appear to have been of a very excitable disposition. It was found impossible to ascertain his movements on the nights of the Whitechapel murders. The knife found on him was bought in Houndsditch about a week before he was detained in the Infirmary. Cutbush was the nephew of the late Supt. Executive.

Now the Whitechapel murderer had 5 victims -- & 5 victims only, -- his murders were

(1) 31st August, '88. Mary Ann Nichols -- at Buck's Row -- who was found with her throat cut -- & with (slight) stomach mutilation.
(2) 8th Sept. '88 Annie Chapman -- Hanbury St.; -- throat cut -- stomach & private parts badly mutilated & some of the entrails placed round the neck.
(3) 30th Sept. '88. Elizabeth Stride -- Berner's Street -- throat cut, but nothing in shape of mutilation attempted, & on same date
Catherine Eddowes -- Mitre Square, throat cut & very bad mutilation, both of face and stomach.
9th November. Mary Jane Kelly -- Miller's Court, throat cut, and the whole of the body mutilated in the most ghastly manner --

The last murder is the only one that took place in a room, and the murderer must have been at least 2 hours engaged. A photo was taken of the woman, as she was found lying on the bed, withot seeing which it is impossible to imagine the awful mutilation.

With regard to the double murder which took place on 30th September, there is no doubt but that the man was disturbed by some Jews who drove up to a Club, (close to which the body of Elizabeth Stride was found) and that he then, 'mordum satiatus', went in search of a further victim who he found at Mitre Square.

It will be noted that the fury of the mutilations increased in each case, and, seemingly, the appetite only became sharpened by indulgence. It seems, then, highly improbable that the murderer would have suddenly stopped in November '88, and been content to recommence operations by merely prodding a girl behind some 2 years and 4 months afterwards. A much more rational theory is that the murderer's brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Miller's Court, and that he immediately committed suicide, or, as a possible alternative, was found to be so hopelessly mad by his relations, that he was by them confined in some asylum.

No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer; many homicidal maniacs were suspected, but no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one. I may mention the cases of 3 men, any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders:

(1) A Mr M. J. Druitt, said to be a doctor & of good family -- who disappeared at the time of the Miller's Court murder, & whose body (which was said to have been upwards of a month in the water) was found in the Thames on 31st December -- or about 7 weeks after that murder. He was sexually insane and from private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.

(2) Kosminski -- a Polish Jew -- & resident in Whitechapel. This man became insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies: he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. There were many circumstances connected with this man which made him a strong 'suspect'.

(3) Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor, and a convict, who was subsequently detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac. This man's antecedents were of the worst possible type, and his whereabouts at the time of the murders could never be ascertained.

And now with regard to a few of the other inaccuracies and misleading statements made by 'The Sun'. In its issue of 14th February, it is stated that the writer has in his possession a facsimile of the knife with which the murders were committed. This knife (which for some unexplained reason has, for the last 3 years, been kept by Inspector Hale, instead of being sent to Prisoner's Property Store) was traced, and it was found to have been purchased in Houndsditch in February '91 or 2 years and 3 months after the Whitechapel murders ceased!

The statement, too, that Cutbush 'spent a portion of the day in making rough drawings of the bodies of women, and of their mutilations' is based solely on the fact that 2 scribble drawings of women in indecent postures were found torn up in Cutbush's room. The head and body of one of these had been cut from some fashion plate, and legs were added to shew a woman's naked thighs and pink stockings.

In the issue of 15th inst. it is said that a light overcoat was among the things found in Cutbush's house, and that a man in a light overcoat was seen talking to a woman at Backchurch Lane whose body with arms attached was found in Pinchin Street. This is hopelessly incorrect! On 10th Sept. '89 the naked body, with arms, of a woman was found wrapped in some sacking under a Railway arch in Pinchin Street: the head and legs were never found nor was the woman ever identified. She had been killed at least 24 hours before the remains which had seemingly been brought from a distance, were discovered. The stomach was split up by a cut, and the head and legs had been severed in a manner identical with that of the woman whose remains were discovered in the Thames, in Battersea Park, and on the Chelsea Embankment on the 4th June of the same year; and these murders had no connection whatever with the Whitechapel horrors. The Rainham mystery in 1887 and the Whitehall mystery (when portions of a woman's body were found under what is now New Scotland Yard) in 1888 were of a similar type to the Thames and Pinchin Street crimes.

It is perfectly untrue to say that Cutbush stabbed 6 girls behind. This is confounding his case with that of Colicott. The theory that the Whitechapel murderer was left-handed, or, at any rate, 'ambidexter', had its origin in the remark made by a doctor who examined the corpse of one of the earliest victims; other doctors did not agree with him.

With regard to the 4 additional murders ascribed by the writer in the Sun to the Whitechapel fiend:

(1) The body of Martha Tabram, a prostitute was found on a common staircase in George Yard buildings on 7th August 1888; the body had been repeatedly pierced, probably with a bayonet. This woman had, with a fellow prostitute, been in company of 2 soldiers in the early part of the evening: these men were arrested, but the second prostitute failed, or refused, to identify, and the soldiers were eventually discharged.

(2) Alice McKenzie was found with her throat cut (or rather stabbed) in Castle Alley on 17th July 1889; no evidence was forthcoming and no arrest were made in connection with this case. The stab in the throat was of the same nature as in the case of the murder of

(3) Frances Coles in Swallow Gardens, on 13th February 1891 -- for which Thomas Sadler, a fireman, was arrested, and, after several remands, discharged. It was ascertained at the time that Saddler had sailed for the Baltic on 19th July '89 and was in Whitechapel on the nights of 17th idem. He was a man of ungovernable temper and entirely addicted to drink, and the company of the lowest prostitutes.

(4) The case of the unidentified woman whose trunk was found in Pinchin Street: on 10th September 1889 -- which has already been dealt with.

M.S. Macnaghten
23rd February 1894

The Littlechild Letter

8, The Chase
Clapham Common S.W.,
23rd September 1913


Dear Sir,
I was pleased to receive your letter which I shall put away in 'good company' to read again, perhaps some day when old age overtakes me and when to revive memories of the past may be a solace.

Knowing the great interest you take in all matters criminal, and abnormal, I am just going to inflict one more letter on you on the 'Ripper' subject. Letters as a rule are only a nuisance when they call for a reply but this does not need one. I will try and be brief.

I never heard of a Dr D. in connection with the Whitechapel murders but amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one, was a Dr. T. (which sounds much like D.) He was an American quack named Tumblety and was at one time a frequent visitor to London and on these occasions constantly brought under the notice of police, there being a large dossier concerning him at Scotland Yard. Although a 'Sycopathia Sexualis' subject he was not known as a 'Sadist' (which the murderer unquestionably was) but his feelings toward women were remarkable and bitter in the extreme, a fact on record. Tumblety was arrested at the time of the murders in connection with unnatural offences and charged at Marlborough Street, remanded on bail, jumped his bail, and got away to Boulogne. He shortly left Boulogne and was never heard of afterwards. It was believed he committed suicide but certain it is that from this time the 'Ripper' murders came to an end.

With regard to the term 'Jack the Ripper' it was generally believed at the Yard that Tom Bullen of the Central News was the originator, but it is probable Moore, who was his chief, was the inventor. It was a smart piece of journalistic work. No journalist of my time got such privileges from Scotland Yard as Bullen. Mr James Munro when Assistant Commissioner, and afterwards Commissioner, relied on his integrity. Poor Bullen occasionally took too much to drink, and I fail to see how he could help it knocking about so many hours and seeking favours from so many people to procure copy. One night when Bullen had taken a 'few too many' he got early information of the death of Prince Bismarck and instead of going to the office to report it sent a laconic telegram 'Bloody Bismarck is dead'. On this I believe Mr Charles Moore fired him out.

It is very strange how those given to 'Contrary sexual instinct' and 'degenerates' are given to cruelty, even Wilde used to like to be punched about. It may interest you if I give you an example of this cruelty in the case of the man Harry Thaw and this is authentic as I have the boy's statement. Thaw was staying at the Carlton Hotel and one day laid out a lot of sovereigns on his dressing table, then rang for a call boy on pretence of sending out a telegram. He made some excuse and went out of the room and left the boy there and watched through the chink of the door. The unfortunate boy was tempted and took a sovereign from the pile and Thaw returning to the room charged him with stealing. The boy confessed when Thaw asked whether he should send for the police or whether he should punish him himself. The boy scared to death consented to take his punishment from Thaw who then made him undress, strapped him to the foot of the bedstead, and thrashed him with a cane, drawing blood. He then made the boy get into a bath in which he placed a quantity of salt. It seems incredible that such a thing could take place in any hotel but it is a fact. This was in 1906.

Now pardon me -- it is finished. Except that I knew Major Griffiths for many years. He probably got his information from Anderson who only 'thought he knew'.

Faithfully yours,

J. G. Littlechild


George R. Sims Esq.,
12, Clarence Terrace,
Regents Park N. W.

Warren's Report to the Home Secretary
6 November 1888

4 Whitehall Place, S.W.
6th November 1888


Confidential
The Under Secretary of State
The Home Office

Sir,

In reply to your letter of the 5th instant, I enclose a report of the circumstances of the Mitre Square Murder so far as they have come under the notice of the Metropolitan Police, and I now give an account regarding the erasing the writing on the wall in Goulston Street which I have already partially explained to Mr. Matthews verbally.

On the 30th September on hearing of the Berner Street murder, after visiting Commercial Street Station I arrived at Leman Street Station shortly before 5 A.M. and ascertained from the Superintendant Arnold all that was known there relative to the two murders.

The most pressing question at that moment was some writing on the wall in Goulston Street evidently written with the intention of inflaming the public mind against the Jews, and which Mr. Arnold with a view to prevent serious disorder proposed to obliterate, and had sent down an Inspector with a sponge for that purpose, telling him to await his arrival.

I considered it desirable that I should decide the matter myself, as it was one involving so great a responsibility whether any action was taken or not.

I accordingly went down to Goulston Street at once before going to the scene of the murder: it was just getting light, the publica would be in the streets in a few minutes, in a neighbourhood ver ymuch crowded on Sunday mornings by Jewsih vendors and Christian purchasers from all parts of London.

There were several Police around the spot when I arrived, both Metropolitan and City.

The writing was on the jamb of the open archway or doorway visible in the street and could not be covered up without danger of the covering being torn off at once.

A discussion took place whether the writing could be left covered up or otherwise or whether any portion of it could be left for an hour until it could be photographed; but after taking into consideration the excited state of the population in London generally at the time, the strong feeling which had been excited against the Jews, and the fact that in a short time there would be a large concourse of the people in the streets, and having before me the Report that if it was left there the house was likely to be wrecked (in which from my own observation I entirely concurred) I considered it desirable to obliterate the writing at once, having taken a copy of which I enclose a duplicate.

After having been to the scene of the murder, I went on to the City Police Office and informed the Chief Superintendant of the reason why the writing had been obliterated.

I may mention that so great was the feeling with regard to the Jews that on the 13th ulto. the Acting Chief Rabbi wrote to me on the subject of the spelling of the word "Jewes" on account of a newspaper asserting that this was Jewish spelling in the Yiddish dialect. He added "in the present state of excitement it is dangerous to the safety of the poor Jews in the East [End] to allow such an assertion to remain uncontradicted. My community keenly appreciates your humane and vigilant action during this critical time."

It may be realised therefore if the safety of the Jews in Whitechapel could be considered to be jeopardised 13 days after the murder by the question of the spelling of the word Jews, what might have happened to the Jews in that quarter had that writing been left intact.

I do not hesitate myself to say that if that writing had been left there would have have been an onslaught upon the Jews, property would have been wrecked, and lives would probably have been lost; and I was much gratified with the prompitude with which Superintendent Arnold was prepared to act in the matter if I had not been there.

I have no doubt myself whatever that one of the principal objects of the Reward offered by Mr. Montagu was to shew to the world that the Jews were desirous of having the Hanbury Street Murder cleared up, and thus to divert from them the very strong feeling which was then growing up.

I am, Sir,


Your most obediant Servant,
(signed) C. Warren

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Two identical copies of the "Juwes" message were enclosed with this correspondance, which read as follows:


The Jewes are
The men that
Will not
be Blamed
for nothing

Pall Mall Gazette
24 March 1903

Should Klosowski, the wretched man now lying under sentence of death for wife-poisoning, go to the scaffold without a "last dying speech and confession," a great mystery may for ever remain unsolved, but the conviction that "Chapman" and "Jack the Ripper" were one and the same person will not in the least be weakened in the mind of the man who is, perhaps, better qualified than anyone else in this country to express an opinion in this matter. We allude to Mr. F. G. Abberline, formerly Chief Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard, the official who had full charge of the criminal investigations at the time of the terrible murders in Whitechapel.

When a representative of the Pall Mall Gazette called on Mr. Abberline yesterday and asked for his views on the startling theory set up by one of the morning papers, the retired detective said: "What an extra- ordinary thing it is that you should just have called upon me now. I had just commenced, not knowing anything about the report in the newspaper, to write to the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr. Macnaghten, to say how strongly I was impressed with the opinion that 'Chapman' was also the author of the Whitechapel murders. Your appearance saves me the trouble. I intended to write on Friday, but a fall in the garden, injuring my hand and shoulder, prevented my doing so until today."

Mr. Abberline had already covered a page and a half of foolscap, and was surrounded with a sheaf of documents and newspaper cuttings dealing with the ghastly outrages of 1888.

"I have been so struck with the remarkable coincidences in the two series of murders," he continued, "that I have not been able to think of anything else for several days past--not, in fact, since the Attorney- General made his opening statement at the recent trial, and traced the antecedents of Chapman before he came to this country in 1888. Since then the idea has taken full possession of me, and everything fits in and dovetails so well that I cannot help feeling that this is the man we struggled so hard to capture fifteen years ago.

"My interest in the Ripper cases was especially deep. I had for fourteen years previously been an inspector of police in Whitechapel, but when the murders began I was at the Central Office at Scotland Yard. On the application of Superintendent Arnold I went back to the East End just before Annie Chapman was found mutilated, and as chief of the detective corps I gave myself up to the study of the cases. Many a time, even after we had carried our inquiries as far as we could-- and we made out no fewer than 1,600 sets of papers respecting our investigations--instead of going home when I was off duty, I used to patrol the district until four or five o'clock in the morning, and, while keeping my eyes wide open for clues of any kind, have many and many a time given those wretched, homeless women, who were Jack the Ripper's special prey, fourpence or sixpence for a shelter to get them away from the streets and out of harm's way."

"As I say," went on the criminal expert, "there are a score of things which make one believe that Chapman is the man; and you must understand that we have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead, or that he was a lunatic, or anything of that kind. For instance, the date of the arrival in England coincides with the beginning of the series of murders in Whitechapel; there is a coincidence also in the fact that the murders ceased in London when 'Chapman' went to America, while similar murders began to be perpetrated in America after he landed there. The fact that he studied medicine and surgery in Russia before he came here is well established, and it is curious to note that the first series of murders was the work of an expert surgeon, while the recent poisoning cases were proved to be done by a man with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine. The story told by 'Chapman's' wife of the attempt to murder her with a long knife while in America is not to be ignored, but something else with regard to America is still more remarkable.

"While the coroner was investigating one of the Whitechapel murders he told the jury a very queer story. You will remember that Dr. Phillips, the divisional surgeon, who made the post-mortem examination, not only spoke of the skillfulness with which the knife had been used, but stated that there was overwhelming evidence to show that the criminal had so mutilated the body that he could possess himself of one of the organs. The coroner, in commenting on this, said that he had been told by the sub-curator of the pathological museum connected with one of the great medical schools that some few months before an American had called upon him and asked him to procure a number of specimens. He stated his willingness to give £20 for each. Although the strange visitor was told that his wish was impossible of fulfillment, he still urged his request. It was known that the request was repeated at another institution of a similar character in London. The coroner at the time said: 'Is it not possible that a knowledge of this demand may have inspired some abandoned wretch to possess himself of the specimens? It seems beyond belief that such inhuman wickedness could enter into the mind of any man; but, unfortunately, our criminal annals prove that every crime is possible!'

'It is a remarkable thing," Mr. Abberline pointed out, "that after the Whitechapel horrors America should have been the place where a similar kind of murder began, as though the miscreant had not fully supplied the demand of the American agent.

"There are many other things extremely remarkable. The fact that Klosowski when he came to reside in this country occupied a lodging in George Yard, Whitechapel Road, where the first murder was committed, is very curious, and the height of the man and the peaked cap he is said to have worn quite tallies with the descriptions I got of him. All agree, too, that he was a foreign- looking man,--but that, of course, helped us little in a district so full of foreigners as Whitechapel. One discrepancy only have I noted, and this is that the people who alleged that they saw Jack the Ripper at one time or another, state that he was a man about thirty- five or forty years of age. They, however, state that they only saw his back, and it is easy to misjudge age from a back view."

Altogether Mr. Abberline considers that the matter is quite beyond abstract speculation and coincidence, and believes the present situation affords an opportunity of unravelling a web of crime such as no man living can appreciate in its extent and hideousness.

Pall Mall Gazette
31 March 1903

Since the Pall Mall Gazette a few days ago gave a series of coincidences supporting the theory that Klosowski, or Chapman, as he was for some time called, was the perpetrator of the "Jack the Ripper" murders in Whitechapel fifteen years ago, it has been interesting to note how many amateur criminologists have come forward with statements to the effect that it is useless to attempt to link Chapman with the Whitechapel atrocities. This cannot possibly be the same man, it is said, because, first of all, Chapman is not the miscreant who could have done the previous deeds, and, secondly, it is contended that the Whitechapel murderer has long been known to be beyond the reach of earthly justice.


In order, if possible, to clear the ground with respect to the latter statement particularly, a repre- sentative of the Pall Mall Gazette again called on Mr. F. G. Abberline, formerly Chief Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard, yesterday, and elicited the following statement from him:

"You can state most emphatically," said Mr. Abberline, "that Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago. It is simple nonsense to talk of the police having proof that the man is dead. I am, and always have been, in the closest touch with Scotland Yard, and it would have been next to impossible for me not to have known all about it. Besides, the authorities would have been only too glad to make an end of such a mystery, if only for their own credit."

To convince those who have any doubts on the point, Mr. Abberline produced recent documentary evidence which put the ignorance of Scotland Yard as to the perpetrator beyond the shadow of a doubt.

"I know," continued the well-known detective, "that it has been stated in several quarters that 'Jack the Ripper' was a man who died in a lunatic asylum a few years ago, but there is nothing at all of a tangible nature to support such a theory.

Our representative called Mr. Abberline's attention to a statement made in a well-known Sunday paper, in which it was made out that the author was a young medical student who was found drowned in the Thames.

"Yes," said Mr. Abberline, "I know all about that story. But what does it amount to? Simply this. Soon after the last murder in Whitechapel the body of a young doctor was found in the Thames, but there is absolutely nothing beyond the fact that he was found at that time to incriminate him. A report was made to the Home Office about the matter, but that it was 'considered final and conclusive' is going altogether beyond the truth. Seeing that the same kind of murders began in America afterwards, there is much more reason to think the man emigrated. Then again, the fact that several months after December, 1888, when the student's body was found, the detectives were told still to hold themselves in readiness for further investigations seems to point to the conclusion that Scotland Yard did not in any way consider the evidence as final."

"But what about Dr. Neill Cream? A circumstantial story is told of how he confessed on the scaffold--at least, he is said to have got as far as 'I am Jack--' when the jerk of the rope cut short his remarks."

"That is also another idle story," replied Mr. Abberline. "Neill Cream was not even in this country when the Whitechapel murders took place. No; the identity of the diabolical individual has yet to be established, notwithstanding the people who have produced these rumors and who pretend to know the state of the official mind."

"As to the question of the dissimilarity of character in the crimes which one hears so much about," continued the expert, "I cannot see why one man should not have done both, provided he had the professional knowledge, and this is admitted in Chapman's case. A man who could watch his wives being slowly tortured to death by poison, as he did, was capable of anything; and the fact that he should have attempted, in such a cold- blooded manner to murder his first wife with a knife in New Jersey, makes one more inclined to believe in the theory that he was mixed up in the two series of crimes. What, indeed, is more likely than that a man to some extent skilled in medicine and surgery should discontinue the use of a knife when his commission--and I still believe Chapman had a commission from America--came to an end, and then for the remainder of his ghastly deeds put into practice his knowledge of poisons? Indeed, if the theory be accepted that a man who takes life on a whole- sale scale never ceases his accursed habit until he is either arrested or dies, there is much to be said for Chapman's consistency. You see, incentive changes; but the fiendishness is not eradicated. The victims, too, you will notice, continue to be women ; but they are of different classes, and obviously call for different methods of despatch."