Jack The Ripper - The Definitive History Part 12

Or, again, take a notorious case of a different kind, 'the Whitechapel murders' of the autumn of 1888. At that time the sensation-mongers of the newspaper press fostered the belief that life in London was no longer safe, and that no woman ought to venture abroad in the streets after nightfall. And one enterprising journalist went so far as to impersonate the cause of all this terror as 'Jack the Ripper', a name by which he will probably go down to history. But all such silly hysterics could not alter the fact that these crimes were a cause of danger only to a particular section of a small and definite cla.s.s of women, in a limited district of the East End; and that the inhabitants of the metropolis generally were just as secure during the weeks the fiend was on the prowl as they were before the mania seized him, or after he had been safely caged in an asylum.6 Here, in 1901, Anderson is saying that Jack the Ripper 'had been safely caged in an asylum'. He would repeat this a.s.sertion several times, most notably in Blackwood's Magazine and in his book.

It is important to note the differences between these two statements. Anderson adds in the book version that the Jews were low-cla.s.s Polish Jews and omits the reference to the publisher accepting liability for libel and the reference to the identification having taken place when the suspect was caged in an asylum. He changed 'declined to swear to him' to the harder 'refused to give evidence against him', and he added the last three sentences stating that it was 'a definitely ascertained fact' that Jack the Ripper was a Polish Jew, that he was specifying race not religion, and that to have discussed the religion of the Ripper would have been an outrage to all religious sentiment.

Detractors of the work of our British Police in bringing criminals to justice generally ignore the important distinction between moral proof and legal evidence of guilt. In not a few cases that are popularly cla.s.sed with 'unsolved mysteries of crime', the offender is known, but evidence is wanting. If, for example, in a recent murder case of special notoriety and interest (Crippen), certain human remains had not been found in a cellar, a great crime would have been catalogued among 'Police failures'; and yet, even without the evidence which sent the murderer to the gallows, the moral proof of his guilt would have been full and clear. So again with the Whitechapel murders of 1888. Despite the lucubrations of many an amateur 'Sherlock Holmes', there was no doubt whatever as to the ident.i.ty of the criminal, and if our London 'detectives' possessed the powers, and might have recourse to the methods, of Foreign Police Forces, he would have been brought to justice.7 Robt. Anderson has a.s.sured the writer that the a.s.sa.s.sin was well known to the police, but unfortunately, in the absence of sufficient legal evidence to justify an arrest, they were unable to take him. It was a case of moral versus legal proof . . . But the question still remains, who and what was Jack the Ripper? Sir Robt. Anderson states confidently that he was a low-cla.s.s Jew, being s.h.i.+elded by his fraternity. Sir Hy. Smith pooh-poohs this, declaring with equal confidence that he was a Gentile . . .8 At the end of 1987 the Daily Telegraph revealed the existence of a copy of Anderson's memoirs presented by Anderson to the retired ex-Superintendent Donald S. Swanson, into whose capable hands the Ripper investigation had been placed. It was one of several books presented by Anderson to his old friend, a copy of Anderson's Criminals and Crime having been given to Swanson as a New Year's Day gift in 1908. Swanson's copy of the book contains pencil notes in the margins and on the endpapers. At the bottom of page 138, where Anderson had written, 'I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him . . .', Swanson added, 'and after this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London'.

After 'but refused to give evidence against him', Swanson wrote, 'because the suspect was also a Jew and also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of murderer being hanged which he did not wish to be left on his mind'. Swanson continued on the end-paper, 'Continuing from page 138, after the suspect had been identified at the Seaside Home where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification, and he knew he was identified. On suspect's return to his brother's house in Whitechapel he was watched by police (City CID) by day & night. In a very short time the suspect with his hands tied behind his back, he was sent to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards Kosminski was the suspect DSS'.

Who was Kosminski? A search of asylum records by the author Martin Fido has revealed only one asylum inmate named Kosminski a man named Aaron Kosminski. Martin Fido's findings have been supported as far as is possible by a comprehensive search of the death registers. Little is known about him, although considerable work has been done following up clues to identify his family. As yet none of this work has thrown any light on why he was suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Aaron Kosminski was born in 1864 or 1865 in Poland and entered England in 1882 when aged 17. He had a brother named Woolf and some sisters, and was a hairdresser by profession. On 12 July 1890 his brother Woolf had him admitted to the Mile End Old Town Workhouse. At that time Aaron appears to have been living at 3 Sion Square,9 which was located at the top of Mulberry Street (where John Pizer lived), and doc.u.ments state that he was '2 years insane'. He was discharged on 15 July 1890 into the care of his brother, whose address is given as 16 Greenfield Street.

Blackwood's Magazine, March 1910 The Lighter Side of My Official Life, 1910 One did not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to discover that the criminal was a s.e.xual maniac of a virulent type; that he was living in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders; and that, if he was not living absolutely alone, his people knew of his guilt, and refused to give him up to justice. During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him, investigating the case of every man in the district whose circ.u.mstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were low-cla.s.s Jews, for it is a remarkable fact that people of that cla.s.s in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice. And the result proved that our diagnosis was right on every point. For I may say at once that 'undiscovered murders' are rare in London, and the 'Jack-the-Ripper' crimes are not within that category. And if the Police here had powers such as the French Police possess, the murderer would have been brought to justice. Scotland Yard can boast that not even the subordinate officers of the department will tell tales out of school, and it would ill become me to violate the unwritten rule of the service. The subject will come up again, and I will only add here that the 'Jack-the-Ripper' letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising London journalist.

One did not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to discover that the criminal was a s.e.xual maniac of a virulent type; that he was living in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders; and that, if he was not living absolutely alone, his people knew of his guilt, and refused to give him up to justice. During my absence abroad the Police had made a house-to-house search for him, investigating the case of every man in the district whose circ.u.mstances were such that he could go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret. And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low-cla.s.s Polish Jews; for it is a remarkable fact that people of that cla.s.s in the East End will not give up one of their number to Gentile justice. And the result proved that our diagnosis was right on every point. For I may say at once that 'undiscovered murders' are rare in London, and the 'Jack-the-Ripper' crimes are not within that category. And if the Police here had powers such as the French Police possess, the murderer would have been brought to justice. Scotland Yard can boast that not even the subordinate officers of the department will tell tales out of school, and it would ill become me to violate the unwritten rule of the service. So I will only add here that the 'Jack-the-Ripper' letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising London journalist.

In a footnote he added:

Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I should almost be tempted to disclose the ident.i.ty of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to, provided that the publishers would accept all responsibility in view of a possible libel action. But no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer. I will only add that when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him, but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow Jew he declined to swear to him.

Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I am almost tempted to disclose the ident.i.ty of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to. But no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer. I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him; but he refused to give evidence against him.

In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact. And my words are meant to specify race, not religion. For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute.

However, Aaron's condition seems to have worsened considerably, because during the afternoon of 4 February 1891 his brother had Aaron re-admitted to the Mile End Old Town Workhouse. Three days later, in the morning of 7 February 1891, Aaron was discharged to Colney Hatch, where the details entered onto the Register of Admissions provides much of the information given above, but adds: 'Education: R&W Time insane: 6 years (i.e., since 1885); Physical disorder: self-abuse; Form of disorder: mania; Symptoms: incoherence; Bodily state: fair'. The Male Patients' Day Book, New Series, no. 20, adds, 'If first attack: no; Previous treatment: Mile End Old Town Workhouse July 1890, Duration of existing attack: 6 months [somebody added in red ink '6 years']; Supposed cause: unknown [again, in red: self-abuse]; Subject to epilepsy: no; Suicidal: no; Dangerous to others: no; Any relative afflicted with insanity: not known; Nearest known relative: Woolf Kosminski, 8 Sion Square, Commercial Road East'. Additional information was apparently provided by the certifying medical officer, E.K. Houchin of 23 High Street, Stepney: He declares that he: is guided and his movements altogether controlled by an instinct that informs his mind, he says that he knows the movements of all mankind, he refuses food from others because he is told to do so, and he eats out of the gutter for the same reason.

Jacob Cohen, 51 Carter Lane, St Paul's EC says that he goes about the streets and picks up his bits of bread out of the gutter and eats them, he drinks water from the tap and he refuses food at the hands of others. He took up a knife and threatened the life of his sister. He is very dirty and will not be washed. He has not attempted any kind of work for years.

On 19 April 1894 Aaron Kosminski was admitted to the Leavesden Asylum. Among some loose papers at the Greater London Record Office is a doc.u.ment which gives Aaron's nearest known relative at this time as his mother, Mrs. Kosminski, who was living at 63 New Street, New Road, Whitechapel.

It should be observed and in a.s.sessing Aaron Kosminski it is a crucially important point that is frequently overlooked or unappreciated that all we know about Aaron Kosminski's physical and mental condition relates to 1891 and later, not to 1888. Experts agree that mental collapse in some cases can be dramatically sudden, so it should not by any means be a.s.sumed that the shambling, unwashed wreck of a man we see in 1891 reflects in any way the Aaron Kosminski of 1888. Also, we actually know very little about his mental condition even when admitted. We know that he suffered audio and visual hallucinations, but we don't know what form they took, and the surviving medical records are terse, often one-line biannual comments on his physical condition. For example, one series of reports states, 1.4.14.

Patient has hallucinations of sight and hearing, is very excitable and troublesome at times, very untidy, bodily condition fair.

1.3.15.

No improvement.

11.11.15.

Patient has cut over left eye caused by knock on tap in wash-house.

8.7.16.

No improvement.

5.4.17.

No improvement.

26.5.18.

Patient put to bed pa.s.sing loose motions with blood and mucous.

27.5.18.

Transferred to 8a.

3.6.18.

Diarrhoea ceased. Ordered up by Dr. Reese.

28.1.19.

Put to bed with swollen feet.

20.2.19.

Put to bed with swollen feet and feeling unwell. Temp. 99.

13.3.19.

Hip broken down.

22.3.19.

Taken little nourishment during day, but very noisy.

23.3.19.

Appears very low. Partaken of very little nourishment during day.

24.3.19.

Died in my presence at 5.05am. Marks on body, sore right hip and left leg. Signed: S. Bennett, night attendant.10 The Greater London Record Office possesses several doc.u.ments relating to the arrangements for Aaron Kosminski's burial. One, dated 25 March 1919, was signed by H.W. Abrahams, 'The Dolphin', Whitechapel, E. London. Abraham's relations.h.i.+p to the deceased is given as 'brothers'. The letter was sent to Mr. Friedlander, Undertaker of Duke Street, United Synagogue, London. Another doc.u.ment is dated 30 March 1919, from G. Friedlander, s.e.xton, Officer of Burial Society, St. James Place, Aldgate EC3 to A.J. Freeman, Leavesden Asylum, acknowledging receipt of a certificate dated 28 March registering Aaron Kosminski's death.

And that is pretty much all we know.

The sources present an almost overwhelming number of problems. To begin with Anderson, in the Blackwood's version of his memoirs, says that the identification took place in the asylum, whereas Swanson says it took place in 'the Seaside Home' before the suspect was committed. This isn't a major problem because Anderson was clearly in error when he wrote that the suspect was identified in the asylum. Once committed to an asylum the suspect would almost certainly have been deemed 'unfit to plead', in which case no court case would have been heard and it would have been irrelevant whether the witness had testified or not. Anderson's emphasis on the witness's behaviour, however, suggests that had he been willing to testify then proceedings would have been taken against the suspect. If so, the suspect had not been committed to an asylum when the identification took place.

Anderson provides very few details about the suspect. He was male, Polish, a Jew; he lived in the heart of the district where the murders were committed, and he had 'people' (presumably a family not the entire Jewish population, as Major Smith rather stupidly suggested) who protected him. All of which fit Aaron Kosminski. And perhaps the clincher to the identification is Anderson's statement, 'For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute'.

The 'utterly unmentionable vices' almost unquestionably refers to masturbation and corresponds to Macnaghten's comment about Kosminski that, 'This man became insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices' 'solitary vices' being the common euphemism for masturbation. This also corresponds with various doc.u.ments relating to Aaron Kosminski's admissions to mental inst.i.tutions which give the cause of his insanity as 'self-abuse'.

Masturbation doesn't cause insanity, of course, but it was widely believed to, as Kosminski's medical papers alone demonstrate. The s.e.xologist William Acton described someone who m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed: The frame is stunted and weak, the muscles undeveloped, the eye is sunken and heavy, the complexion is sallow, pasty, and covered with spots of acne, the hands are damp and cold, and the skin moist. The boy shuns the society of others, creeps about alone, joins with repugnance in the amus.e.m.e.nts of his schoolfellows. He cannot look anyone in the face, and becomes careless in dress and uncleanly in person. His intellect has become sluggish and enfeebled, and if his evil habits are persisted in, he may end in becoming a drivelling idiot or a peevish valetudinarian. Such boys are to be seen in all stages of degeneration, but what we have described is but the result towards which they all are tending.

One can only wonder at how many masturbators Acton had discovered and in whom these symptoms were observed. The terror a.s.sociated with the first appearance of acne doesn't bear thinking about, but Acton's description fits Aaron Kosminski precisely. The point, however, is that masturbation links Aaron Kosminski with Macnaghten's 'Kosminski' and with Anderson's unnamed Polish Jew suspect who Swanson identifies as Kosminski. The spa.r.s.e details that Anderson provides also fit Aaron Kosminski. This said, Swanson's account fits Aaron Kosminski in the main, but on two points there is disagreement: Swanson says the suspect was sent to Stepney Workhouse, whereas Aaron Kosminsky was sent to Mile End Old Town Workhouse. However, the expanding borough of Stepney absorbed Mile End Old Town in 1901, so that when Swanson wrote nine years later Mile End Old Town Workhouse technically would have been Stepney Workhouse.

Swanson said that the murders ended with the suspect's identification, whereas commentators like Anderson and Macnaghten believed the murders ended in 1888. This is true of the 'Jack the Ripper' sequence, but other murders were included in the files because at the time they were thought to have been committed by the Ripper. The last of these was the murder on 13 February 1891 of Frances Coles, and among Swanson's private papers was a list of victims compiled at the time of Alice McKenzie's murder in Castle Alley in 1889 and to which was appended the name of Frances Coles. This was the last crime in the wider Whitechapel murders sequence, and it coincides with the committal of Aaron Kosminski, which may have been what Swanson meant.

However, no explanation seems available for Swanson's claim that the suspect died soon after committal. Aaron Kosminski lived on until 1919.11 It is perhaps one small indication that Aaron Kosminski was not the 'Kosminski' named by Macnaghten Aaron Kosminski is not known to have had a 'great hatred of women', a particular hatred 'of the prost.i.tute cla.s.s', 'strong homicidal tendencies' or to have been committed to an asylum 'about March 1889' or the Kosminski named by Swanson. On the other hand Aaron Kosminski fits almost all the other details.

Swanson wrote: 'after the suspect had been identified at the Seaside Home where he had been sent by us with difficulty in order to subject him to identification, and he knew he was identified. On suspect's return to his brother's house in Whitechapel he was watched by police (City CID) by day & night. In a very short time the suspect with his hands tied behind his back, he was sent to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards Kosminski was the suspect'.

This is an incredible story. A suspect taken 'with difficulty' for identification at a place called 'the Seaside Home', being positively identified by an eye-witness but allowed thereafter to return to his brother's house, where the City CID mount 24-hour surveillance. Informed commentators reject this story as contrary to acceptable police procedure and many questions spring up: Why did the police have difficulty taking someone suspected of committing a serious crime for identification? Why did the identification take place at the 'Seaside Home'? Why did the police release a positively identified suspect? Why wasn't pressure brought to bear on the witness to make him testify? Why did the City CID keep surveillance on a Metropolitan Police suspect in Metropolitan Police territory (a.s.suming the suspect was Aaron Kosminski)? On the other hand, Swanson was an experienced policeman, as aware of police procedure as anyone and probably more so than a modern commentator, so why would he have told a story so alien to what was likely to have happened unless it was the truth?

Swanson's story is interesting. There is no good reason why the Metropolitan Police would have asked for the City CID to maintain surveillance on a positively identified suspect. The Met. would have done the job itself. It therefore seems reasonable to a.s.sume that the City CID were maintaining surveillance before the Met. took the suspect to be identified and Swanson's remark that the suspect was taken for identification 'with difficulty' may suggest that the Metropolitan Police managed to sneak the suspect away without the City CID's knowledge. The 'Seaside Home' is almost certainly the Convalescent Police Seaside Home opened at Clarendon Villas, West Brighton, in March 1890. The police had used other establishments, but they were not for the exclusive use of the police and whilst it is possible that Swanson could have meant one of these, he is elsewhere sufficiently precise in his details for us to suspect that he was describing a specific place.

Other interesting remarks in Swanson's account include the fact that the suspect 'knew he was identified' and 'after identification which suspect knew . . .'. This seems a pretty fatuous statement to make and reiterate. It may mean, however, that the suspect reacted in some way to the witness.

If identifying the suspect is a problem, identifying the witness is more so.

There are two princ.i.p.al candidates: Joseph Lawende, who saw Catharine Eddowes with a man at the entrance to the pa.s.sage leading into Mitre Square; and Israel Schwartz, who saw a man a.s.sault a woman he identified as Elizabeth Stride outside the gates of the Berner Street club, her body later being found just within the gates. Other witnesses such as Mrs. Long and George Hutchinson have to be discounted because the witness was a Jew, also male. There is a possibility that a witness exists of whom we know nothing. We only know about Schwartz by good fortune and we should perhaps also consider the 'pipeman', the second man seen by Schwartz at the scene of the Stride a.s.sault. But of the two princ.i.p.al candidates Schwartz tends to be given very short shrift by most commentators, who then a.s.sess Joseph Lawende and conclude that his testimony wouldn't have stood up in court for two seconds.12 Objections to Schwartz are that Macnaghten said that Kosminski 'in appearance strongly resembled the individual seen by the City PC near Mitre Square'; Swanson said that the City CID maintained surveillance on the suspect, which they would have had no business doing if the man in question was suspected of committing a Metropolitan Police crime; and if the murderer called out the derogatory term 'Lipski' at Schwartz then the attacker wasn't a Jew, as the suspect undoubtedly was.

We know of no City PC witness, so either there wasn't one and Macnaghten was completely adrift, or he wrote City PC when in fact he meant Joseph Lawende, a Jewish commercial traveller in the cigarette trade. The third possibility is that he confused the location and meant PC Smith in Berner Street, and we have evidence of a transposition in Macnaghten's claim that the Berner Street murderer had been disturbed by the arrival of three Jews. The three Jews were Lawende, Levy and Harris, thus he transferred the three witnesses of Mitre Square to Berner Street and could most reasonably have transferred the witness of Berner Street, PC William Smith, to Mitre Square. That the City CID would have had no business maintaining surveillance in Metropolitan Police territory on a suspect in a Metropolitan Police crime is a moot point, especially if they suspected the Metropolitan Police crime to have been committed by the same hand as a City Police crime. But the reverse is even more absurd, that the Met. should have taken a City suspect in a City crime to be identified by a City witness. And unfortunately there is such uncertainty about who shouted 'Lipski', and at whom, that one has to weigh it in the balance against the reasons for thinking that the witness was Schwartz.

Most commentators who prefer Lawende over Schwartz proceed to point out all the reasons that make him a bad witness.13 For example, that he merely glimpsed the man as he pa.s.sed, that he persistently claimed thereafter that he would be unable to recognise the man again, that he paid the couple scant attention and it remains uncertain that the woman he saw was Eddowes, and that there was time after he had pa.s.sed for the man to have left the woman and for her killer to have emerged from the shadows of Mitre Square. All reasons which in themselves don't argue in favour of Lawende being the witness in the first place.

Interestingly, Lawende was used in the identification of a man named Thomas Sadler who was suspected of murdering Frances Coles in February 1891. He couldn't identify him. He was used again, it would seem, in the spring of 1895, when he positively identified another man, William Grant Grainger, a man who seriously a.s.saulted a prost.i.tute, as the man he had seen. The use of Lawende in these cases has been employed as evidence to suggest that he was also the witness who would have been used to identify Anderson's suspect, a corollary to which is the fact that if the witness was used twice after his identification then it is clear that the first identification was nowhere near conclusive. But the identifications of Sadler and Grainger took place after the positive identification of Aaron Kosminski would have taken place and the police are unlikely to have re-used a witness who had already positively identified a suspect as it would devalue both the first identification and certainly devalue any further identifications. The fact that Lawende was used therefore strongly suggests that he wasn't Anderson's witness.

The most likely candidate to be the witness, despite the reservations already mentioned, is Israel Schwartz. He saw a man actually a.s.sault a woman whom he identified as Elizabeth Stride at the very place where her body was later discovered. Since it is highly improbable that Stride would have been attacked by different men in the same place within 15 minutes, or that two women would be a.s.saulted in the same place within 15 minutes, it must be a.s.sumed that Schwartz did see Stride's murderer and therefore was indeed 'the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer' [my emphasis], just as Anderson said. And even if Kosminski was under surveillance by the City CID under suspicion of having murdered Catharine Eddowes, the strong similarities between the man seen with Eddowes and the man seen with Stride would have made it worthwhile for the Metropolitan Police to have put the suspect before their own witness.

But whoever the suspect and the witness were, was Anderson right? Was his suspect Jack the Ripper? More energy seems to have been given to devising reasons why he was wrong. It has been suggested that he made the whole story up, that his belief in the suspect's guilt was geriatric wishful thinking, or that he confused the identification of someone else with the solution to the Whitechapel murders. He has been shown in later years to have suffered from a poor memory. Minor errors have been catalogued, a Parliamentary joke at Anderson's expense has been used to suggest that he was notably 'flighty with the truth', and his character has been torn apart to find evidence of dishonesty, boastfulness, inability to accept failure, inept.i.tude and other foibles and failings. But at the end of the day none of the arguments seem to hold together. He said as early as 1901 that the Ripper had been 'safely caged in an asylum'. It wasn't a matter of wishful thinking, confusion or a faulty memory. Unless someone can produce evidence that Anderson lied, there was a suspect, there was a witness and there was an identification; Anderson came away from it believing that the suspect was guilty.

Michael Ostrog It is only in the last few years that anything at all has been known about Michael Ostrog and now we actually know quite a lot, although none of it sheds any light on why he was ever suspected of being Jack the Ripper. He was a petty thief and conman who had numerous aliases, among them Bertrand Ashley, Claude Clayton (Cayton), Dr. Grant, Max Grief, Gosslar, Ashley Nabokoff, Orloff, Count Sobieski and Max Sobiekski. He wasn't very successful, was mentally unstable and probably highly delusional. From 1863, when we first hear of him following his sentence to ten months in prison for a theft in August, until 1904, when he was released from prison and entered St. Giles Christian Mission in Holborn and vanishes from the historical record, it is obvious that he spent his life in and out of prison or hospital. Crucially, and thanks to the diligent research of Ripper scholar Philip Sugden,14 on 26 July 1888 Ostrog was arrested by the French police in Paris. On 14 November 1888 five days after the murder of Mary Kelly he was charged under the name of Stanislas Lublinski, alias 'Grand Guidon', and convicted of the theft of a microscope belonging to Monsieur Legry in Paris. Taking previous convictions into account, and the fact that since 1866 he had been barred from entering the country, he received the harsh sentence of two years in prison as well as costs. This discovery has naturally shed doubt on the real value of the Macnaghten Memorandum: why should someone whose whereabouts were unknown, who therefore wasn't even known to be in London, let alone Whitechapel, be listed among the top three suspects? Sadly, the answer is that we don't know and it seems futile to guess.

Francis Tumblety In February 1993 Stewart Evans, one of the country's leading Ripper experts and a collector of crime ephemera, purchased some doc.u.ments from a Richmond-based antiquarian book-dealer named Eric Barton, among which was a letter written by ex-Chief Inspector John Littlechild to a well-known journalist and author named George R. Sims. This letter was typewritten, running to three pages and dated 23 September 1913. It was in reply to a letter written by Sims in which he appears to have asked Littlechild if he had ever heard of a Dr. D.: 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 crininal [sic], 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 s.e.xualis' subject he was not known as a 's.a.d.i.s.t' (which the murderer unquestionably was) but his feelings towards 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 a.s.sistant 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 'b.l.o.o.d.y Bismarck is dead'. On this I believe Mr. Charles Moore fired him out.

It is very strange how those given to 'Contrary s.e.xual 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 him 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 quant.i.ty 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'15 J.G. Littlechild.

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

Francis Tumblety was a regular visitor to England and arrived at Liverpool in June 1888. We don't know what he did in the country between that time and 7 November, but on that date he was arrested and charged with h.o.m.os.e.xual activities with four men between 27 July and 2 November. On 12 November he was charged in connection with the Whitechapel murders. This would suggest that Tumblety was at liberty after 7 November and thus able to have murdered Kelly. He was bailed on 16 November, attended a hearing at the Old Bailey on 20 November, then fled the country on 24 November under the false name of 'Frank Townsend', going first to Boulogne and then taking the steamer La Bretagne to New York City.

American newspapers reported that Scotland Yard men had followed Tumblety across the Atlantic and we know that in December 1888 Inspector Walter Andrews, who had taken two criminals to Montreal, then went to New York on business connected with the Ripper case, but it is not known that it had anything to do with Tumblety. Andrews gave a press interview in which he said that Scotland Yard had 20 detectives, 2 clerks and 1 inspector employed on the Ripper investigations, and this became garbled in the English press suggesting that these men were employed on the case in the United States. Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Byrnes of the New York City Police traced Tumblety to a lodging at 79 East Tenth Street and kept him under surveillance, but did not arrest him, saying that 'there is no proof of his complicity in the Whitechapel murders, and the crime for which he was under bond in London is not extraditable'. On 5 December Tumblety disappeared from his lodgings and vanished from the public gaze until 1893 when he lived with his sister in Rochester, New York. He died a wealthy man in 1903 in St. Louis.

Curiously Tumblety attracted no attention in the British press, either because the police kept his arrest a secret or because he was not really suspected of complicity in the Ripper crimes at all.

Tumblety is an extraordinarily attractive candidate for the mantle of Jack the Ripper, but unfortunately much of the evidence around him is speculative albeit that the speculation is generally wellfounded. He apparently hated women and prost.i.tutes, it is probable that he possessed anatomical knowledge and he had a curious anatomical collection that included uteri he was charged in connection with the crimes (although we don't know the connection and should not a.s.sume that he was charged on suspicion of being the murderer), he fled England and a senior Ripper investigator was detailed from Canada to New York when Tumblety was there.

Against Tumblety is the fact that contrary to what is sometimes a.s.serted, Littlechild did not think Tumblety was Jack the Ripper and probably wouldn't ever have mentioned him had not G.R. Sims asked about Dr. D. Although Littlechild wrote, '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', Littlechild also wrote of Tumblety that, 'Although a "Sycopathia s.e.xualis" subject he was not known as a "s.a.d.i.s.t" (which the murderer unquestionably was) but his feelings towards women were remarkable and bitter in the extreme, a fact on record'. In other words, Tumblety had an exceptional dislike of women which was probably what recommended him to Littlechild's mind as 'a very likely' candidate among the suspects but he was not a s.a.d.i.s.t, which Littlechild believed Jack the Ripper 'unquestionably was'. Whether or not the Ripper was actually a s.a.d.i.s.t is irrelevant, of course; Littlechild believed he was, knew that Tumblety wasn't and accordingly wouldn't have believed that Tumblety was the Ripper. Littlechild did not say he thought Jack the Ripper was Francis Tumblety or say anything that allows us even to infer that he thought Tumblety was likely to be the Ripper. Indeed, though he describes Tumblety as a likely suspect, what he does say indicates that he probably did not think Tumblety was the Ripper.

Which doesn't mean that he wasn't Jack the Ripper. With Druitt and Kosminski he remains at the top of the tree of suspects.

George Chapman Finally there is George Chapman, whose real name was Severin Klosowski, a Pole with surgical training who came to England in 1887 and worked for a hairdresser in the East End until going to America in 1890. He returned to England in 1895 and between 1895 and 1901 he poisoned three women, for which crime he was hanged in 1903. He was suspected by no greater authority on the Ripper crimes than Inspector Abberline, and as the man in charge of the investigation on the ground, Abberline's opinion deserves our attention. Unfortunately, it doesn't deserve our attention for very long. In The Trial of George Chapman, H.L. Adam wrote: Chief Inspector Abberline, who had charge of the investigations into the East End murders, thought that Chapman and Jack the Ripper were one and the same. He closely questioned the Polish woman, Lucy Baderski, about Chapman's nightly habits at the time of the murders. She said that he was often out until three or four o'clock in the morning, but she could throw no light on these absences. Both Inspector Abberline and Inspector G.o.dley spent years in investigating the 'Ripper' murders. Abberline never wavered in his firm conviction that Chapman and Jack the Ripper were one and the same person. When G.o.dley arrested Chapman Abberline said to his confrere 'You've got Jack the Ripper at last!'.16 Although H.L. Adam thanks Inspector G.o.dley for his a.s.sistance in preparing his book, and therefore we must a.s.sume that some such comment was made, this story contains claims that seem untenable. Abberline is said to have closely questioned Lucy Baderski about George Chapman's nightly habits at the time of the murders, but at Klosowski's trial Lucy Baderski's brother, Stanislaus, said that Lucy had met Klosowski at a Polish club and had married him in August (or October) 1889 after only having gone out with him for four to five weeks. Even allowing for quite a substantial margin of error in the estimate by Stanislaus of the duration of his sister's romance, Lucy Baderski would still have been in no position to speak with authority about Klosowski's nocturnal habits at the time of the Ripper murders in 1888. Furthermore, Inspector Abberline had retired from the Metropolitan Police in February 1892, just over ten years before the arrest of Severin Klosowski on 25 October 1902, so in what capacity would he have questioned Lucy Baderski so closely? Finally, a reporter for the Pall Mall Gazette visited Abberline on Monday 23 March 1903 and found him busy writing to Macnaghten and expressing his opinion that Chapman was Jack the Ripper. The Pall Mall Gazette reported Abberline as saying, 'I have been so struck with the remarkable coincidences in the two series of murders 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'.17 Therefore, by Abberline's own admission he did not have any opinions about Klosowski until March 1903, when 'the Attorney-General made his opening statement at the recent trial'. Abberline could not have said to G.o.dley, 'You've got Jack the Ripper at last!' when, as H.L. Adam says, 'G.o.dley arrested Chapman' in October 1902.

But Abberline did entertain suspicions about Severin Klosowski/George Chapman. His opinion, however, was based on nothing more substantial than a series of coincidences: Klosowski/Chapman had studied medicine and surgery in Russia, had first lodged in George Yard where Martha Tabram was murdered and had attempted to murder his wife with a long knife. His arrival in London coincided with the beginning of the murders, and he then went to America where similar murders began. His height and the peaked cap he favoured 'quite tallies with the descriptions I got of him' and all the descriptions the police got of the Ripper described him as 'a foreign-looking man'.

The biggest objection to Abberline's theory then and now is the improbability of a murderer who eviscerated five women with the brutality displayed by Jack the Ripper turning to wife poisoning. Unfortunately, Abberline's answer to this objection, though seemingly sensible, isn't hugely inspiring. Referring back to the inquest, Abberline seized upon the story made public by Coroner Wynne Baxter about an American doctor seeking to purchase anatomical organs. Baxter had suggested that someone had thus been inspired to collect the organs. Abberline thought that this might have accounted for Chapman's change of modus: '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 the 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 wholesale 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 cla.s.ses, and obviously call for different methods of despatch'.

Abberline therefore supposed that Klosowski/Chapman had murderous instincts, channelled first into the collection of organs, then into the destruction of his wives when he tired of them. But n.o.body who looks at the photograph of Mary Kelly, or reads one of the medical reports, could ever seriously believe that she had been murdered by a coldly clinical seeker of body parts for sale. As the Morning Advertiser prophetically observed, 'Students of modern crime are not likely to pay much heed to Inspector Abberline's theory'.18 Abberline's theory, though, has recently garnered some distinguished supporters.

So who was Jack the Ripper? The sad fact is that n.o.body knows and n.o.body is likely to know. Having said that, somewhere there may be a doc.u.ment perhaps misfiled at the Public Record Office, in the archives of a library or maybe sitting in a dusty box in someone's loft that will reveal all. As things stand, I think Aaron Kosminski is the leading contender, not because I think he was Jack the Ripper, but because of all the policemen who expressed an opinion, Anderson is the only one to have expressed certainty. We need to find out why.

In the preceding chapters we have seen that many social issues came to a head or put down their roots during the 1880s, and focused attention on the East End of London. There is a lot more that could be said, much more that would give a fuller flavour to the crimes and the East End. This book has barely explored the Jewish East End, for example, but, although immigration was a dominant feature of the East End, it didn't significantly focus attention on the area in the way that other things did. Hopefully it will be the subject of a future book. What we have seen is how the 1880s were a time of profound change, and how, at the centre, was Jack the Ripper.

Notes.

1. Aberconway, Christabel (1949) A Dictionary of Cat Lovers. London: Michael Joseph.

2. Broadcast on ITV at 10.45pm on 5 and 12 November 1969.

3. There is a possible third version of the Memorandum. In the early 1950s a friend of Gerald Donner, named Philip Loftus, spent Christmas with him and was shown Sir Melville's papers. In August 1972 he wrote to Lady Aberconway about the doc.u.ment he had seen and described the three named suspects as 'Michael John Druitt', 'a feeble-minded man [probably Thomas Cutbush]' and 'a Polish-Jew cobbler nicknamed Leather Ap.r.o.n'. (Philip Loftus to Lady Aberconway, 11 August 1972, private collection.) In October 1972 he wrote for the Guardian a review of a book written by Daniel Farson. He omitted Cutbush and 'Leather Ap.r.o.n', but added that the material he had seen was 'in Sir Melville's handwriting on official paper, rather untidy and in the nature of rough jottings'. (Philip Loftus, review of Jack the Ripper by Daniel Farson, 7 October 1972.) This version would seem to suggest that the 'Polish-Jew cobbler nicknamed Leather Ap.r.o.n' corresponds with the Polish Jew called 'Kosminski' in the extant versions, but there is no evidence that 'Kosminski' was either a cobbler or nicknamed Leather Ap.r.o.n. That Loftus' memory was at fault is indicated by the fact that he recalled that Thomas Cutbush was a suspect, when the charges against Cutbush were what Macnaghten wrote the report to refute. It seems likely that Loftus' memory had been contaminated by his acknowledged reading and earlier Druittnaming Ripper book, Tom Cullen's Autumn of Terror.

4. Heard, Stawell (2000) 'Mr Valentine's School'. Ripperologist, 32, December.

5. Macnaghten, Sir Melville (1914) Days of My Years. London: Longmans, Green & Co, pp.54, 612.

6. Anderson, Robert (1901) 'Punis.h.i.+ng Crime', The Nineteenth Century, February.

7. Anderson, Sir Robert, 'Preface' to Adam, H.L. (1911) The Police Encyclopedia, Vol. 1. London: Routledge.

8. Adam, Hargrave L. (1912) 'Scotland Yard and its Secrets', The People, 9 June.

9. As a child the famous artist Max Gertler would live in Sion Square.