Complete History Of Jack The Ripper Part 12

In no case did the murderer leave a weapon or other clue at the scene of the crime.

Sitting quietly in retirement at his home on the Suss.e.x coast, Walter Dew often reflected on these most gruesome murders. What puzzled the old detective most was the Ripper's ability to evade vigilant police patrols. 'I was on the spot, actively engaged throughout the whole series of crimes,' he reminds us in his memoirs. 'I ought to know something about it. Yet I have to confess I am as mystified now as I was then by the man's amazing elusiveness.'11 Dew and his colleagues were blamed and denigrated for their failure at the time. The charges are still thoughtlessly bandied about by amateur criminologists today. But it is a harsh judgement. If all the historical circ.u.mstances are taken into account it is not difficult to understand why the Ripper remained uncaught.

By retiring with the Ripper into secluded byways where they were unlikely to be seen the victims themselves greatly facilitated his crimes. Even at the height of the panic, when prost.i.tutes fled the district or sought shelter in casual wards, the most desperate of their kind might still be seen soliciting for the price of a doss or a drink. A fatalism born of despair possessed such women. Detective Inspector Moore, interviewed in 1889, understood their plight only too well: 'I tell many of them to go home, but they say they have no home, and when I try to frighten them and speak of the danger they run they'll laugh and say, "Oh, I know what you mean. I ain't afraid of him. It's the Ripper or the bridge with me. What's the odds?" And it's true; that's the worst of it.'12 The Ripper's escapes from the scenes of his crimes are surprising but not inexplicable. No one knew what he looked like. And although he may well have been bloodstained there is no reason to depict him scuttling through the streets in clothes that were saturated with blood. In fact, his modus operandi suggests otherwise. We know that the Ripper severed the throats of his victims from the opposite side of the head to the first escape of arterial blood. It is probable, too, that the victims were first strangled. Certainly the abdominal mutilations were inflicted after death. These circ.u.mstances all point to the likelihood of the killer remaining very little bloodstained. Then the character of the district worked to his advantage. A warren of dark, evil-smelling courts, alleys and yards, it was impossibly complex for any police force to patrol adequately. The murderer may even have effected escapes through private houses. For, as we learned in the case of Hanbury Street, many tenements in the area were never locked. Any fugitive could duck in by the front door and leave by the back.

The police investigation ultimately failed because the Victorian CID were simply not equipped to deal with 'motiveless' murders of this kind. Inquiries into the histories of the victims afforded no clues. Traditional methods of detection, resting heavily upon rewards and informants, were almost useless in a hunt for a lone killer. Even in our own day, with all the advantages of fingerprinting, the biochemical a.n.a.lysis of blood, DNA fingerprinting and psychological profiling, the capture of such offenders is often a matter of luck. Back in 1888 the luck always ran with the Ripper.

Paul Begg, Martin Fido and Keith Skinner, in their Jack the Ripper A to Z, one of relatively few sane books on the case, contend that the police investigation was 'professional and competent'.13 Bearing in mind that we must judge the police by the standards of their own time, not by those of our own day, I would not wish to dissent from that view. Indeed, the dedication and diligence of the investigation on the ground is worthy of admiration.

Nevertheless, in one respect the criticisms of the Victorian press were probably justified. The Telegraph spoke at the time of a lack of imagination in the detective department, and a study of the Whitechapel crimes certainly does suggest a want of innovative spirit at the Yard. For detectives not only failed to exploit fully the advantages of photography, the one important aid to detection then available, but they evinced no disposition, in the midst of the most important murder hunt of the century, to explore new methods of criminal investigation.

The potential of the popular press, then beginning to come into its own on the strength of Education Acts of 1870, 1876 and 1880, went largely unrecognized. CID policy on the press has already been explained. It rested upon some sound principles. But there can be little doubt that, on balance, the possibilities of this increasingly influential inst.i.tution were undervalued. Opportunities were lost. To take just one example, although police rightly repudiated the sketches Richardson showed to Packer and published after the double murder, why was it beyond them to couple a professional artist with one or more reliable witnesses of their own in order to produce a more accurate impression of the murderer?

Most telling is the absence of any reference to fingerprinting in the Whitechapel murder files, even though the pioneers of this technique had been trying to promote their discoveries for over a decade. Herschel, who had employed fingerprinting as a means of identification in India, had advocated its use in a letter to the Registrar General as early as 1877, and Faulds, who had discussed fingerprint cla.s.sification in Nature in 1880, had been trying to interest a suspicious Scotland Yard in the method since 1886. The subject came up again in the midst of the Ripper hunt. Learning that the Jack the Ripper postcard bore a b.l.o.o.d.y thumbprint, Mr Frederick Jago, a correspondent of the Times, observed that the 'surface markings on no two thumbs are alike' and urged that the thumbs of suspects be compared through a microscope with the print on the card.14 One might reasonably have expected this most baffling of murder mysteries to have called forth advances in the techniques of criminal detection. 1888 did prompt some police soul-searching. Standing Orders on the discovery of murdered bodies were tightened up after the Nichols murder and post-mortem examinations were conducted in the presence of more than one surgeon after that of Annie Chapman. But there was little genuine reappraisal of police methods. And what there was looked back, to tracker dogs, pardons and rewards, not ahead, to photography and fingerprinting.

What of the Ripper himself? Well, historical records tell us a good deal about him.

First, are we dealing with one man or two?

Cases of folie a deux, a madness shared by two people, are relatively uncommon in the annals of serial murder but they do occur. Perhaps the most notable recent examples were Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, the 'Hillside Stranglers' who raped and murdered a dozen girls in California in the late 1970s.

The only tangible evidence that Jack the Ripper had an accomplice comes from Israel Schwartz. As he told it, the man he saw attacking Liz Stride in Berner Street called out 'Lipski!', apparently to a second man across the way, who then saw Schwartz off. Unfortunately, although the substance of this story may well be true the correct interpretation of the facts observed is greatly in doubt. Did the murderer call out to the second man, for example, or to Schwartz himself? And was the second man really an accomplice? Or was he, like Schwartz, a scared bystander who hurriedly left the scene to escape involvement? Under interrogation even Schwartz was not certain.

No other witness is known to have seen a murder victim in the company of more than one man immediately preceding the crime. The nearest to it is Sarah Lewis. She saw a man loitering outside Miller's Court on the night Mary Kelly was killed. A short, stout man, who wore a black wideawake hat and was looking up the court 'as if waiting for someone to come out.' This man may, of course, have been an accomplice, on watch outside while his confederate slew Mary in No. 13. However, there is nothing conclusive to connect him with the murder. And a more reasonable explanation is that he was George Hutchinson, the labourer, for by his own account Hutchinson was waiting outside Miller's Court at precisely this time.

Certainly the Ripper may have had an accomplice, someone whose function it was to stand at a distance and warn him of impending danger. But, intriguing as the 'two man' theory of the murders undoubtedly is, it must at present be set aside. Typically this type of offender works alone and the evidence for the second man in the case is altogether too flimsy.

Our study of the facts enables us to tear away at least part of the murderer's mask.

Three out of the six probable Ripper murders, those of Annie Chapman, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes, took place at weekends. Another two occurred on public holidays. Martha Tabram died on the night of August Bank Holiday, Mary Kelly on the morning of the Lord Mayor's Show. All six were committed between the hours of midnight and six a.m. We can infer, then, that the murderer was probably in regular work and free of family accountability, i.e., that he was single.

The statements of witnesses who gave descriptions of men seen with one or other of the victims are invaluable but must be used with care. Some, like Mrs Long, were good witnesses but only had a partial view of the suspect. Others, like Packer, appear to have been dishonest. Several reported sightings too far ahead of the crime for us to presume a likelihood that they saw the murderer.

A study of the best (Long, Smith, Schwartz, Lawende, Levy and Hutchinson) suggests that the murderer was a white male of average or below average height in his twenties or thirties. The man Lawende saw with Kate Eddowes was reportedly 'rather rough and shabby'. But three witnesses Mrs Long, PC Smith and Israel Schwartz described men of 'shabby-genteel' or 'respectable' appearance. And Hutchinson's suspect looked positively affluent. John Douglas of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit has suggested that the killer may have intentionally dressed up to persuade potential victims that he had money and thus relieve himself of the task of initiating contact with them.15 Whatever, the evidence is that we will not find our man amongst the labouring cla.s.ses or indigent poor.

Two of the six victims (Tabram and Nichols) were killed in Whitechapel, two (Chapman and Kelly) in Spitalfields, one (Stride) in St George's-in-the-East and one (Eddowes) in the City. But all of the murder sites are within a single square mile.

This close grouping of the killings, together with the killer's apparent familiarity with the district, undoubtedly suggests that he was a local man. Can we, then, as Professor Canter suggests, plot the murder sites on a map and simply plump for some central spot within the area circ.u.mscribed by the sites as the likely location of his home?16 Frustratingly, we cannot.

The Ripper's earliest crimes are certainly likely to have been close to home. The trouble is that the historical data does not permit us to say what his earliest crimes were. As already noted, the Tabram murder was probably predated by other offences. These may have been rapes or unsuccessful attacks, or even crimes that were not s.e.x-related. The point is that by the time the Ripper turned to murder he may already have become a relatively experienced and confident criminal, striking further afield to minimize the chances of being recognized. Whitechapel and Spitalfields, with their large populations of needy prost.i.tutes, would have been rich hunting grounds for such a miscreant.

I strongly believe that the Ripper lived in the East End but I would not wish to hazard any closer location than that. The only real information we have is that after killing Kate Eddowes in Mitre Square, at the western margin of the murder district, he doubled back into Whitechapel, leaving a portion of Kate's ap.r.o.n in Goulston Street.

The police made repeated inquiries at common lodging houses in the neighbourhood of the murders. This is understandable because every victim except Mary Kelly had lived in one of these places.

It is not impossible that the murderer found boltholes in them. Very little notice was taken of men inquiring for beds during the night. At the Eddowes inquest Frederick Wilkinson, the deputy from 55 Flower and Dean Street, said that when men came for lodgings he entered the number of the bed in his book but not the man's name. Pressed, he conceded that he sometimes lodged over 100 people at a time and that if the beds were paid for boarders were 'asked no questions'.17 It may even have been possible for a bloodstained man to clean up in a common lodging house. It was the practice in these establishments for men to use a common was.h.i.+ng place. Water, once used, was thrown down the sink by the lodger using it.

It is unlikely, however, that a man of respectable appearance, a man in regular work, would have needed to resort to a common lodging house. In all probability the Ripper lived in private lodgings or with relatives. The police themselves eventually seem to have come to this conclusion. This is why, after the double murder, they distributed handbills to householders and made a house-to-house search of parts of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. When he retired in 1892 Abberline commented that he did not think that the killer would be found lurking in a 'dosser's' kitchen.18 Modern writers frequently allege that the Ripper was left-handed or ambidextrous. Our best evidence indicates that neither statement is true. His modus operandi, as reconstructed from contemporary records and outlined in this chapter, implies that he was right-handed. Professor Cameron's deductions in the case of Kate Eddowes confirm this conclusion.

Did the murderer possess any anatomical knowledge or surgical skill? This question has been fiercely debated by Ripperologists for decades.

The medical evidence given in police reports and inquest depositions has been fully set down in this book. From it we know that although the doctors and surgeons who examined one or more of the 'canonical' victims (Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly) disagreed about the extent of the murderer's expertise almost all attested to some degree of knowledge or skill. The sole dissentient was Dr Bond. But even his att.i.tude was ambivalent. Examining Mary Kelly's injuries, he concluded that her killer had demonstrated no anatomical knowledge. Yet, only eight months later, he attributed Alice McKenzie's death to the same man, partly on the grounds that her throat had been 'skilfully & resolutely cut'. Doctors Phillips and Gordon Brown, in their post-mortem examinations of Annie Chapman and Kate Eddowes respectively, thought they could detect a great deal of expertise, both anatomical knowledge and surgical skill, in the mutilations.

Modern opinion has too often been the servant of pet ident.i.ty theories. For many years Professor Francis Camps' views have held sway amongst serious students of the case. The professor decided, largely on the strength of sketches and photographs of Kate Eddowes, that the Ripper possessed little if any medical expertise.19 However, this judgement was made at a time when Ripper research was in a very primitive state. Since then much detailed medical evidence relating to the murders has come to light. Camps ignored, too, the conditions in which the murderer had worked at great speed, in poor light and in constant danger of detection.

For an up-to-date view I turned to an acknowledged expert in the field Nick Warren. As a practising surgeon and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of both England and Edinburgh, he is well qualified to a.s.sess the medical evidence, and as a keen criminologist and the editor of Ripperana, the specialist's quarterly, he is conversant with all aspects of the case.

Nick raises doubts about the validity of Dr Bond's judgement. Bond had been instructed by the Home Office to investigate the 'Thames Torso' murders. From 1887 to 1889 the dismembered remains of four women were recovered along and near the Thames. Three of them were fully decapitated and the heads were never found. Now, the beheadings in these cases suggested to Bond that their perpetrator possessed anatomical skills. So when he considered the Ripper evidence and noted that the murderer had apparently tried and failed to decapitate two of his victims, Annie Chapman and Mary Kelly, he put him down as an unskilled operator. Unfortunately, modern experience suggests that Bond's a.s.sumption that only skeletal dismemberment required 'anatomical skill' is a false one.

Nick believes that the Ripper's attempt to separate the vertebrae of Annie Chapman's neck and his pelvic dissection of this victim indicate anatomical knowledge. He believes, too, that the removal of the left kidney in the case of Kate Eddowes evidenced definite anatomical knowledge and surgical skill. For it required both to extract the organ, as the Ripper did, through the vascular pedicle from the front. It lay embedded in fat, behind the peritoneum and overlain by the stomach, spleen, colon and jejunum.20 In a district of high immigration and rising social tension it was perhaps inevitable that the murders should be blamed upon a foreigner.

It was a view even found at Whitehall. G.o.dfrey Lus.h.i.+ngton, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, saw evidence of Jewish guilt in the message left by the murderer in Goulston Street on the night of the double murder. 'It seems to me,' he wrote on 13 October, 'that the last murder [Eddowes] was done by a Jew who boasted of it.' Later, when he read a police report of Israel Schwartz's statement, he a.s.sumed that the man Schwartz saw had addressed an accomplice by his proper name of 'Lipski' and noted in the margin: 'The use of "Lipski" increases my belief that the murderer was a Jew.'21 It is not as simple as that. 'Lipski!' was a taunt commonly applied to Jews in the East End and it was Abberline's belief that Schwartz's suspect had used it against Schwartz himself. Even if he did address an accomplice by the name it is quite likely to have been a trick, designed to fool Schwartz into thinking that the murderers were Jews. Indeed, the evidence from the double event frequently suggests crude attempts to incriminate the Jews. The police certainly interpreted the Goulston Street graffito, left at the entrance of a tenement largely inhabited by Jews, as such. And the fact that Long Liz was murdered outside a club patronized by Jewish socialists suggests the same possibility.

The only tangible evidence that the murderer was a foreigner came from Mrs Long and George Hutchinson. Mrs Long thought that the man she saw with Annie Chapman was a foreigner. However, her evidence doesn't really count because she only saw the suspect's back. Hutchinson's does. He said that the man he saw going into Miller's Court with Mary Kelly looked like a Jew. It persuaded Abberline. In 1903 he told a reporter that in his opinion the murderer was 'a foreign-looking man'.22 But Hutchinson's evidence is not above question. And it is always possible that Mary got rid of the man he saw and picked up another client shortly before her death.

It may be significant that none of the other witnesses indicated that they had seen men of foreign appearance.23 Attempts to correlate the dates of the murders with sacred days in the Jewish calendar have also been unsuccessful.24 Jack the Ripper may have been a foreigner. We must bear this possibility in mind. But the historical evidence is far too fragmentary and contradictory to prove it.

On some aspects of the case the historical record tell us little. Perhaps the most important is motive. No significant link between the victims has been established. Robbery cannot explain the slaughter of dest.i.tutes. And we cannot even infer a grudge against prost.i.tutes because these women were obvious and easy targets for anyone with murder and mutilation in mind. The Jack the Ripper crimes are now generally described as s.e.x murders. Despite the tag s.e.x does not seem to be the primary motivation for many such offenders. But the roots of their behaviour are complicated and contentious and this is no place to speculate upon them. Whether the Ripper was driven by fear and hatred of women, whether he suffered from ego-frustration and craved recognition and esteem, or whether he was simply a s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t, these are matters upon which history cannot enlighten us.

Equally mysterious is the killer's disappearance.

Serial killers rarely take their own lives. Yet many writers have found suicide a likely explanation for the termination of the Ripper crimes. It is usually b.u.t.tressed by the a.s.sertion that they became progressively more ferocious, the inference being that the killer's brain gave way altogether after Miller's Court. This is misleading. Martha Tabram, the probable first victim, died in a frenzied attack. And the extent of the mutilations of the others reflected the time at the disposal of the murderer more than anything else. Nichols and Stride escaped relatively lightly because in their cases the killer seems to have been disturbed and driven off. Mary Kelly was the most extensively mutilated victim. But then she was killed in her own home, where the Ripper had the time and safety to indulge himself.

There are other feasible solutions to the riddle. The murderer may have been imprisoned for an unconnected offence or confined in an asylum. He may have emigrated. Or, perhaps after a police interview, he may simply have stopped killing for fear of detection. Serial murderers do sometimes lie dormant for extended periods. After murdering thirteen women from June 1962 to January 1964, Albert DeSalvo, the Boston strangler, lost his compulsion to kill and reverted to simple rape. Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman, in their book The Serial Killers, instance the further case of Il Mostro, the 'Monster of Florence', who killed sixteen people between 1968 and 1985. There was a gap of six years between his first double murder in 1968 and his second in 1974 and seven years between that event and the third double killing in 1981.25 So who was Jack the Ripper?

Previous writers have almost always tailored the facts to suit a theory. We will proceed from the opposite direction. It is time for us to rea.s.sess the main police suspects. But in doing so we must keep the historical facts ever before us.

We are looking for a white male of average or less than average height in his twenties or thirties, a man of respectable appearance who lived in the neighbourhood of the crimes, probably in private lodgings or with relatives. The dates of the murders indicate that he was in regular work, the times that he was single. He was probably right-handed and possessed a degree of anatomical knowledge and surgical skill. He may have been a foreigner. I do not claim that a single one of these contentions is beyond challenge. I do believe that if the real killer is ever identified most of them will prove to have been correct.

But enough, let's get to the suspects!

19.

Found in The Thames: Montague John Druitt.

'AS A CHILD I often thought that if some fairy offered me three wishes, the first thing I would ask would be the ident.i.ty of Jack the Ripper; the thought that it might remain a mystery forever was intolerable.'1 So wrote Colin Wilson, bestselling author of The Outsider, but all of us who have ever been intrigued by this most baffling of mysteries will recognize the feeling. Driven by a strange, compelling need to know the truth, we find it hard to accept that written proof of the Ripper's ident.i.ty probably never existed.

In that respect Tom Cullen, who wrote the first important book on the Ripper, was no different from the rest of us. Cullen endorsed Sir Melville Macnaghten's identification of the killer with a man whose body was taken out of the Thames in December 1888. But he would not agree with Macnaghten that 'the truth . . . will never be known, and did indeed, at one time lie at the bottom of the Thames.' No, argued Cullen, 'in all likelihood the truth is locked up in a steel filing cabinet at Scotland Yard; or perhaps it lies buried in some musty attic among letters that have long since been forgotten, photographs that have faded, the lock of hair that is mouldy with age.'2 Stories surface fairly regularly to torment the ardent student of the crimes with visions of some final, conclusive proof, usually lost or irretrievable, and therefore just beyond his grasp. One of the latest comes from Christopher Monro, a grandson of James Monro, Warren's successor as Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. According to Christopher, Monro set down his views on the Whitechapel murders in 'highly private memoranda' which pa.s.sed, upon his death in 1920, to his eldest son Charles. Charles Monro died in his sixties about 1929. A year or two before his death, however, he confided to his brother Douglas (Christopher's father) that he still had the papers but didn't know whether he should destroy them or not. Monro's theory about Jack the Ripper, said Charles, was a 'very hot potato' and Monro had kept it a close secret, even from his wife. Douglas, who died in 1958, made no attempt to learn from Charles the ident.i.ty of Monro's suspect. Instead, he urged him: 'Burn the stuff, Charlie, burn it and try to forget it!'3 In following up this intriguing story Martin Howells and Keith Skinner contacted several of Monro's other living descendants. No one knew anything of the papers mentioned by Christopher but one of them did produce, from the back of a cupboard in an Edinburgh suburb, Monro's handwritten memoirs, written for the benefit of his children in 1903. To serious students of police history this doc.u.ment must represent a veritable gem. But, as Howells and Skinner discovered when they were permitted to see it, it contains no reference to the murders.

Despite this and other stories of doc.u.ments once extant final, irrefutable proof of the murderer's ident.i.ty has consistently eluded us. The experience of Howells and Skinner is, indeed, very much par for the course in Ripper research. A similar fate befell Donald Rumbelow's efforts to trace the surviving papers of Chief Inspector Abberline. His heart must have leaped when, in the records of the Hamps.h.i.+re Genealogical Society, he unearthed a sc.r.a.pbook of the inspector's press cuttings interspersed throughout with his handwritten notations. Once again, however, there was nothing, not even a press cutting, on the Ripper crimes.4 Our century-old obsession with this case has wrung the reminiscences of senior police officers dry of every conceivable shade of meaning. It has repeatedly plundered the archives of Scotland Yard for relevant names. It has sucked into the quest living descendants of policemen and suspects alike. Sometimes, as in the instances we have noted, it has uncovered valuable incidental materials. But it has not put a name to Jack the Ripper. Where anything at all bearing upon the killer's ident.i.ty has come to light it has proved at best inconclusive, at worst downright fraudulent. In this context those who hunt the Ripper are vaguely reminiscent of the Spanish conquistadores, those foolhardy adventurers of four centuries ago who, driven by s.h.i.+mmering visions of El Dorado, Cibola or Quivira, cut their way through steaming jungles or toiled across burning deserts to find at their journey's end, not the riches for which their souls longed, but cl.u.s.ters of dirt villages or desolate plains.

Although no one was ever brought to trial for any of the Whitechapel crimes, claims that the ident.i.ty of the killer was known, or at least strongly suspected, by the police are almost as old as the murders themselves. Unquestionably the best known story of this kind maintains that in the opinion of the CID the Ripper was a man who committed suicide by throwing himself into the Thames soon after the Miller's Court murder. The person who did more than anyone else to broadcast this tale was the journalist and author George R. Sims.

Under the pseudonym 'Dagonet' Sims wrote a regular piece for The Referee in which he frequently adverted to the suicide in the Thames. Thus, in July 1902, he a.s.sured his readers that during the course of their inquiries the police reduced the number of suspects to seven and then, 'by a further exhaustive inquiry', to just three. They were 'about to fit these three people's movements in with the dates of the various murders when the one and only genuine Jack saved further trouble by being found drowned in the Thames, into which he had flung himself, a raving lunatic, after the last and most appalling mutilation of the whole series. But prior to this discovery the name of the man found drowned was bracketed with two others as a possible Jack, and the police were in search of him alive when they found him dead.' Returning to the theme a year later, Sims wrote that 'no one who saw the victim of Miller's Court as she was found ever doubted that the deed was that of a man in the last stage of a terrible form of insanity . . . A little more than a month later the body of the man suspected by the chiefs at the Yard, and by his own friends, who were in communication with the Yard, was found in the Thames. The body had been in the water about a month. I am betraying no confidence in making this statement, because it has been published by an official who had an opportunity of seeing the Home Office Report, Major Arthur Griffiths, one of her late Majesty's inspectors of prisons.' If Sims is to be believed the case was closed. He never admitted to any doubt in the matter. 'Jack the Ripper was known, was identified, and is dead,' he declared in 1903. 'Let him rest.'5 Major Arthur Griffiths, writing in Mysteries of Police and Crime in 1898, was much more circ.u.mspect. 'The outside public,' he began, 'may think that the ident.i.ty of . . . Jack the Ripper was never revealed. So far as actual knowledge goes, this is undoubtedly true. But the police, after the last murder, had brought their investigations to the point of strongly suspecting several persons, all of them known to be homicidal lunatics, and against three of these they held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion.'

He described but did not name the three suspects. One, a known lunatic, was a Polish Jew. He was at large in Whitechapel at the time of the murders and was afterwards committed to an asylum. Another was an insane Russian doctor. Formerly a convict, both in Siberia and England, he was accustomed to carry surgical knives and other instruments about with him and, during the period of the murders, 'was in hiding, or, at least, his whereabouts were never exactly known.' The cases against these men, although based on 'certain colourable facts', were weak. Against the third suspect, however, 'the suspicion . . . was stronger, and there was every reason to believe that his own friends entertained grave doubts about him.' This man was also a doctor. He was insane or 'on the borderland of insanity'. He disappeared after the Miller's Court murder. And his body was found floating in the Thames on the last day of the year. 'It is at least a strong presumption,' concluded Griffiths guardedly, 'that Jack the Ripper died or was put under restraint after the Miller's Court affair, which ended this series of crimes.'6 The police files were closed to the public. So there for more than sixty years the story of the drowned doctor rested.

Then, in 1959, the curtain of secrecy that had veiled the Thames suicide for so long was at last torn aside. The man who did it was Dan Farson, the journalist and television presenter, but it was all an unlooked for accident. At the time Farson was staying with Lady Rose McLaren in North Wales and he happened to mention that he was in the midst of preparing a television investigation on the mystery of Jack the Ripper. 'That's an extraordinary coincidence,' said Lady McLaren. She explained that they were going to visit her mother-in-law, the Dowager Lady Aberconway, that very afternoon. And Lady Aberconway was a daughter of Sir Melville Macnaghten, who had been the a.s.sistant Commissioner in charge of the CID from 1903 to 1913.

'A few hours later at Maenan Hall,' Farson afterwards recalled, 'I explained my interest to Christabel Aberconway and she was kind enough to give me her father's private notes which she had copied out soon after his death. At the time I hardly realized the discovery that lay in my hands . . .'7 What Farson was holding, in fact, was a copy of a draft report prepared by Macnaghten as Chief Constable of the CID in 1894. It was this draft that Griffiths had copied from in 1898 and to which Sims had alluded in 1903. It contained details, with names, of three men against whom the police held 'very reasonable suspicion' and it is still one of the most important doc.u.ments that we possess on the ident.i.ty of Jack the Ripper.

Farson's programmes were transmitted by a.s.sociated Rediffusion in the series Farson's Guide to the British in November 1959. Once he had been given the name of the man who had committed suicide it was, of course, a relatively simple matter for Farson to turn up his death certificate at Somerset House. It was displayed on the television screen but, in deference to a request of Lady Aberconway, Farson blanked out the name. He released only the suspect's initials, M. J. D. It was a futile gesture for once the Macnaghten notes had been publicized on television there was little possibility of keeping their full contents a secret for long. Indeed, in a letter to The New Statesman of 7 November 1959, Lady Aberconway herself drew attention to the existence of her father's notes. Tom Cullen published the full text insofar as it treated of the three main suspects in 1965. His text also followed Lady Aberconway's copy of Sir Melville's draft. Then the official copy of Macnaghten's final report, which had all the while been slumbering undisturbed amongst the closed case papers at Scotland Yard, was also released. Robin Odell published the relevant section of this doc.u.ment in 1966.8 There are significant differences between the Aberconway and official versions. So, before examining their contents, we will need to understand the relations.h.i.+p between the two.

Melville Macnaghten joined the Metropolitan Police as a.s.sistant Chief Constable of the CID in June 1889, too late to partic.i.p.ate in the Ripper inquiry. It was said of him, indeed, that he owned to only two disappointments in his life. One was that he was turned out of the Eton Eleven before a match with Harrow and the other was that he became a detective six months after the Ripper committed suicide and 'never had a go at that fascinating individual'.9 In 1890 he was promoted to Chief Constable and in 1903 to a.s.sistant Commissioner in charge of CID, an office he held for ten years. He was knighted in 1908 and died in 1921.

On 13 February 1894 a series of sensational articles began in the Sun identifying the Ripper with a certain Thomas Cutbush. The Sun's suspect had been arraigned at the London County Sessions in 1891 on charges of maliciously wounding one girl and attempting to wound another, and he had been p.r.o.nounced insane and sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure. But he was not the Whitechapel murderer and the whole purpose of Macnaghten's report was to refute the Sun's claims. The official report is marked 'confidential' and dated 23 February 1894. No a.s.sociated papers have survived. It seems probable, nonetheless, that it was prepared upon the instructions of the Chief Commissioner in response to an appeal for information from the Home Office respecting the statements being broadcast in the Sun.

The doc.u.ment held by Macnaghten's descendants has been several times discussed10 and there is no need to enter into the full ramifications of its history here. It appears to have been Macnaghten's original draft and it pa.s.sed, after Lady Macnaghten's death in 1929, to Julia Donner, their eldest daughter. In 1950 Philip Loftus apparently saw it in the possession of Gerald Melville Donner, Julia's son. Although, twenty-two years later, Loftus retained only the haziest impressions as to the doc.u.ment's contents, he did remember that it was 'in Sir Melville's handwriting on official paper, rather untidy and in the nature of rough jottings.'11 Gerald died in India in 1968 and the present whereabouts of the draft are not known. By a lucky chance, however, the text was preserved by Christabel Aberconway, Julia Donner's younger sister, for Christabel made a copy of her father's notes, evidently in the early 1930s. It was this copy that was made available to Farson and Cullen.

Well, what does Sir Melville tell us? The relevant section of Lady Aberconway's copy of the draft reads: A much more rational and workable theory, to my way of thinking, is that the 'rippers' brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Millers Court and that he then committed suicide, or, as a less likely alternative, was found to be so helplessly insane by his relatives, that they, suspecting the worst, had him confined in some Lunatic Asylum.

No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer (unless possibly it was the City P. C. who was on a beat near Mitre Square) and no proof could in any way ever be brought against anyone, although very many homicidal maniacs were at one time, or another, suspected. I enumerate the cases of 3 men against whom Police held very reasonable suspicion. Personally, after much careful & deliberate consideration, I am inclined to exonerate the last 2, but I have always held strong opinions regarding no 1., and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become. The truth, however, will never be known, and did indeed, at one time lie at the bottom of the Thames, if my conjections [sic] be correct.

No. 1. Mr M. J. Druitt a doctor of about 41 years of age & of fairly good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller's Court murder, and whose body was found floating in the Thames on 31st Dec: i.e. 7 weeks after the said murder. The body was said to have been in the water for a month, or more on it was found a season ticket between Blackheath & London. From private information I have little doubt but that his own family suspected this man of being the Whitechapel murderer; it was alleged that he was s.e.xually insane.

No 2. Kosminski, a Polish Jew, who lived in the very heart of the district where the murders were committed. He had become insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, with strong homicidal tendencies. He was (and I believe still is) detained in a lunatic asylum about March 1889. This man in appearance strongly resembled the individual seen by the City P.C. near Mitre Square.

No: 3. Michael Ostrog, a mad Russian doctor & a convict & unquestionably a homicidal maniac. This man was said to have been habitually cruel to women, & for a long time was known to have carried about with him surgical knives & other instruments; his antecedents were of the very worst & his whereabouts at the time of the Whitechapel murders could never be satisfactorily accounted for. He is still alive.12 The corresponding pa.s.sage of the final report, preserved in the Scotland Yard files at the Public Record Office, reads: 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 s.e.xually 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 prost.i.tute cla.s.s, & had strong homicidal tendencies; he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. There were many circ.u.mstances 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.13 M. J. Druitt was Sir Melville's princ.i.p.al suspect. Since 1959 he has inspired a great deal of research and today we probably know much more about him than the police did at the time. The details of his career have been published many times14 so a brief summary will suffice here.

Montague John Druitt, the second son of a surgeon, William Druitt of Wimborne in Dorset, was born on 15 August 1857. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and graduated in 1880 with a third cla.s.s honours degree in cla.s.sics.

Upon leaving university, Druitt took a teaching post at a boarding school at 9 Eliot Place, Blackheath. This establishment prepared boys for the universities, the army and the professions. Its headmaster, George Valentine, lost little time in introducing Druitt to the local elite. In 1881 he proposed his new master for members.h.i.+p of the Blackheath Hockey Club and in the same year Druitt began to play for the Morden Cricket Club of Blackheath.

A year later Druitt embarked on a second career in the law. On 17 May 1882 he was admitted to the Inner Temple. He financed his studies by borrowing against a 500 legacy of his father and, on 29 April 1885, was called to the Bar. The Law List entry for 1886 states that Druitt was of the Western Circuit and the Winchester Sessions. In 1887 he was recorded as a special pleader for the Western Circuit and Hamps.h.i.+re, Portsmouth and Southampton a.s.sizes.

Druitt's last years were marred by tragedy. His father died of a heart attack in 1885 and his mother, Ann (nee Harvey) Druitt, subsequently slipped into mental illness and was admitted to the Brooke Asylum in Clapton in July 1888. Yet by that time Druitt himself seems to have been financially secure. He taught at a respected private school and his work as a special pleader was lucrative at least he left an estate worth 2,600, more than can be accounted for by his father's bequest, a posthumous inheritance of 1,083 from his mother and his earnings as a teacher. His social standing, moreover, was considerable. When Morden Cricket Club merged in 1885 with the Blackheath Cricket, Football and Lawn Tennis Co. Druitt became a director, being appointed treasurer and honorary secretary. His fellow directors included Rowland Hill, one of England's most renowned rugby footballers, Dr Lennard Stokes, a distinguished sportsman and captain of the England rugby team, and R. H. Poland, a wealthy fur broker. In 1883 Druitt was nominated for members.h.i.+p of the MCC by C. R. Seymour, an Old Harrovian and barrister who played for MCC and Hamps.h.i.+re and who would become a Wilts.h.i.+re and Hamps.h.i.+re JP, and by the celebrated cricketer Vernon Royle, then a Hertfords.h.i.+re curate and a.s.sistant master at Elstree School. He was elected on 26 May 1884 and his subscriptions were fully paid up at the time of his death. In both the MCC Candidates' and Members' Books Druitt's address is recorded as 9 Eliot Place, Blackheath.

Druitt's suicide at the end of 1888 must, therefore, have come as a profound shock to many of his acquaintances. Commenting upon it, the Southern Guardian of 5 January 1889 noted that he was 'well known and much respected in the neighbourhood. He was a barrister of bright talent, he had a promising future before him, and his untimely end is deeply deplored.'

Druitt's body was found floating in the Thames off Thorneycroft's Wharf, Chiswick, by Henry Winslade, a waterman out in his boat, at about one o'clock p.m. on Monday, 31 December 1888. He brought the body ash.o.r.e and notified the police. PC George Moulson 216T, who searched the dead man, found that he was fully dressed except for a hat and collar. His possessions included 2 17s. 2d. in cash; two cheques on the London and Provincial Bank, one for 50, the other for 16; a first-cla.s.s season ticket from Blackheath to London on the South Eastern Railway; the second half of a return ticket, Hammersmith to Charing Cross, dated 1 December; a silver watch and a gold chain with a spade-guinea attached; a pair of kid gloves and a white handkerchief. The body was rather decomposed and had obviously been in the water for some time but there were no marks of injury upon it. In each pocket of the top coat PC Moulson discovered four large stones. Although there were no other papers or letters on the body, the cheques must have carried Druitt's name. William Druitt, a Bournemouth solicitor and Montague's elder brother, was eventually contacted and subsequently identified the corpse.15 What blackness of the soul induced Montague Druitt to take his life we cannot tell. We do know that he was discharging his social duties at least as late as 19 November because on that day the minutes of a Blackheath Cricket, Football and Lawn Tennis Co. board meeting record that he proposed that 'an acre of land be taken behind the grand stand at a similar proportionate rent to that paid for the present land.' But the only evidence directly bearing upon the cause of his suicide was presented at the inquest. It was held before Dr Thomas Diplock at the Lamb Tap, Chiswick, on Wednesday, 2 January 1889, and concluded that Druitt took his own life whilst of unsound mind. Unfortunately the coroner's papers have not survived. Our knowledge of the testimony given, therefore, rests almost entirely upon a report in the Acton, Chiswick, and Turnham Green Gazette of 5 January. The key witness was William Druitt: William H. Druitt said he lived at Bournemouth, and that he was a solicitor. The deceased was his brother, who was 31 last birthday. He was a barrister-at-law, and an a.s.sistant master in a school at Blackheath. He had stayed with witness at Bournemouth for a night towards the end of October. Witness heard from a friend on the 11th of December that deceased had not been heard of at his chambers for more than a week. Witness then went to London to make inquiries, and at Blackheath he found that deceased had got into serious trouble at the school, and had been dismissed. That was on the 30th of December. Witness had deceased's things searched where he resided, and found a paper addressed to him (produced). The Coroner read the letter, which was to this effect: 'Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die.' Witness, continuing, said deceased had never made any attempt on his life before. His mother became insane in July last. He had no other relative.

The main difficulty in the interpretation of this extract is the ambiguous reporting of the date 30 December. For careful study of the pa.s.sage will demonstrate that the date can be read either as that upon which Druitt lost his job or as that upon which William made inquiries at the school. Probably the first meaning was intended because if one of Montague's friends was sufficiently concerned to apprise William of his disappearance as early as 11 December it is unlikely that William would have procrastinated for another three weeks before making inquiries. If 30 December is meant to be the date of Montague's dismissal, however, it is incorrect, for by that time his body had been in the river for the best part of a month. One explanation of this difficulty would be that 30 December is, in fact, a misprint for 30 November.

A date of 30 November for Druitt's dismissal makes sense. We do not know when he threw himself into the river. A death date of 4 December, exactly one week before William learned of his disappearance, is inscribed upon his tombstone. According to William's story, however, he was told on 11 December that Montague had been missing for more than a week and a suicide date of 1 December, the date of the unused return ticket from Hammersmith to Charing Cross, is more likely. Perhaps, then, Druitt was dismissed from the school on Friday, 30 November, and committed suicide the next day. Such a reconstruction would be consistent with his alleged suicide note, presumably penned on the day of his death, to the effect: 'Since Friday I felt that I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die.'

It is possible although there is no evidence of it that the cheques found on the body were written by George Valentine in settlement of Druitt's teaching salary. We do not know why he was dismissed. Some writers have suggested that he was a h.o.m.os.e.xual, that his offence was molesting his young charges, but this is mere conjecture. Whatever the reason, by itself the dismissal is not likely to have prompted Druitt's suicide. He was still a qualified barrister and, with his social connections, might have acquired another teaching post. To a personality already disturbed, however, it could have proved the final straw. In this context it is important to note that depression and suicidal urges blighted the lives of several members of the Druitt clan and may have been inherited traits linked with diabetes. Ann Druitt, Montague's mother, who died at the Manor House Asylum in Chiswick in 1890, suffered from depression and paranoid delusions and once tried to kill herself by taking an overdose of laudanum. Ann's mother had committed suicide whilst insane and her sister had also once suffered from mental illness and had attempted suicide. Montague's niece, the daughter of his sister Edith, told Dan Farson in 1973 about a strong streak of melancholia in the family. His eldest sister, Georgiana Elizabeth, for example, had committed suicide by jumping from an attic window when she was an old woman.

What is conspicuously absent from this portrait of the ill-fated barrister is the existence of any verifiable links with the Jack the Ripper murders or even with Whitechapel. So just how serious a suspect is Druitt?

The main, indeed the only, reason why Druitt stands high on the list of suspects is because Macnaghten held a strong conviction that he was the Ripper. Writing the official version of his report, he cautiously mentioned Druitt only as one of three men, 'any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders.' But there is no doubt that privately he believed Druitt to have been the killer. 'Personally, after much careful & deliberate consideration,' he tells us in the draft, 'I am inclined to exonerate the last 2 [Kosminski and Ostrog], but I have always held strong opinions regarding no. 1, and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become.' Twenty years later, in his autobiography, he affirmed his belief that the 'individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people; that he absented himself from home at certain times, and that he committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888.'16 Macnaghten did not join the force until the summer of 1889. His views, however, are not easily discounted for he had access to the files and, more important, to the officers who had investigated the murders. Furthermore, inquiries continued intermittently until 1895 and two of Sir Melville's names Druitt and Kosminski did not become suspects until after he had taken up his post at the Yard. Macnaghten made this plain in relation to Druitt in his autobiography: 'Although . . . the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability, put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November 1888, certain facts, pointing to this conclusion, were not in possession of the police till some years after I became a detective officer.'17 Nevertheless, it is much easier to demonstrate that Macnaghten thought Druitt was the Ripper than it is to explain why. The only evidence to which he alludes is mentioned in the enigmatic statement that 'from private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.' Writers who promote the Druitt theory usually contend that the source was one of Montague's relations his brother William is the conventional choice but in truth we know neither the source nor the nature of Macnaghten's information. And we are never likely to know. For Macnaghten, interviewed by the Daily Mail in 1913, claimed that although he had 'a very clear idea' who the Ripper was and how he committed suicide he would never reveal what he knew. 'I have destroyed all my doc.u.ments,' he said, 'and there is now no record of the secret information which came into my possession at one time or another.'18 A careful study of Macnaghten's writings on the Ripper suggests that his accusation of Druitt owed as much to his 'theory' of the murders as to anything he may specifically have heard about the suspect. He attributed just five killings to Jack the Ripper, the first that of Polly Nichols, the last that of Mary Kelly, and was greatly impressed by the fact that the extent of the mutilations generally increased throughout this series. It reflected, in Macnaghten's view, less the circ.u.mstances in which the individual murders had been committed than the deteriorating mental state of the killer. He was a s.e.xual maniac and such a man, in the grip of a progressively worsening condition, could scarcely have abstained from killing after the Miller's Court affair. Rather, contended Macnaghten, it was far more likely that 'after his awful glut on this occasion, his brain gave way altogether and he committed suicide; otherwise the murders would not have ceased.'19 These views certainly help to explain why Sir Melville found Druitt such a plausible suspect and the argument is as potent today as it was then. Many latter-day students of the case undoubtedly find the drowned barrister so intriguing precisely because his death would furnish us with a tidy explanation of the increased ferocity and abrupt termination of the killings. A good, recent example of such thinking came from the late Professor Francis Camps, the eminent pathologist. Writing a foreword to Dan Farson's book, Camps a.s.serted that the crimes 'increased in the degree of mutilation, each one being worse than the last' and that 'murders of this type only stop when the murderer is either dead or incarcerated.' As for Druitt, the professor told Farson 'this is the type of person you're looking for. He wouldn't have stopped had he lived.'20 No police officer other than Macnaghten ever accused Druitt21 so we must examine his position very carefully. And the harder we do that the less tenable it appears to be.

First, the 'evidence'. 'From private information,' Sir Melville wrote, 'I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.' Now, Druittists have contended that this cryptic statement proves that the family's alleged suspicions about Montague were divulged to the police by one of their number. However, close scrutiny of the wording affords no grounds for any such belief. Macnaghten's use of the phrase 'I have little doubt' indicates that he was not absolutely certain that Druitt's family suspected him. The suggestion of uncertainty is telling. It implies most strongly that the informant was not one of Druitt's immediate family and that Macnaghten was relaying suspicions garnered, at best, at second hand. Common sense, too, suggests that Druitt's close kin are unlikely to have been the source of Macnaghten's information. For if they really did suspect Montague they are hardly likely, once he was dead, to have broadcast their fears to the police or anyone else. Such an action would only have exposed them to the risk of unnecessary distress and embarra.s.sment. There is the further point that had Macnaghten's source been a close relative of Druitt he would have been able to furnish him with accurate biographical data about the dead man. But, as we will presently discover, many of the things Macnaghten wrote about Druitt are now known to have been wrong.

Attempts to identify the informant must of necessity be speculative. He may have been a distant relative of Montague or a family acquaintance. We do know that there were tenuous links between the Macnaghten and Druitt clans. Sir Melville's father, the last chairman of the East India Company, appointed Druitt's aunt's brother to the board in 1855. And Walter Boultbee, who worked at the Yard as private secretary to Macnaghten's friend and patron James Monro, married Ellen Baker, niece of Alfred Mayo, a friend and distant relative of Thomas Druitt, in 1885. It is now exceedingly unlikely that we will ever discover the precise nature and source of Macnaghten's information. Nevertheless, it does not seem to have been better than secondhand and may well have been mere hearsay.

Whatever the source, suspicion alone carries little weight. During the murder scare any abnormal behaviour was apt to invoke a charge that the disturbed or eccentric individual was Jack the Ripper and innumerable innocents fell under suspicion. As the Times observed, 'it seems at times as if every person in the streets were suspicious of everyone else he met, and as if it were a race between them who could first inform against his neighbour.'22 Macnaghten's interpretation of the murder evidence is no more persuasive than his 'private information' about Druitt. There is little to substantiate his view that the mutilation of the victims evidenced changes in the disposition or mental state of the murderer. As explained in the previous chapter, the extent of the injuries inflicted seems to have been directly related to the amount of time at the disposal of the killer. More, Macnaghten's contention that they progressively increased throughout the series is only true if the Tabram and Stride slayings are excluded from the toll. There are good grounds, however, for including both. And if Martha Tabram is included as a Ripper victim Macnaghten's argument collapses completely for this first killing was as ferocious as anything that followed it. The notion endorsed by Macnaghten and Camps that s.e.xual serial killers cannot abstain from murder has never been more than an unverified a.s.sumption. More recent experience, as already noted, seems to demonstrate the contrary. Even if it were true the abrupt termination of the Ripper killings might be explained by any number of scenarios other than suicide by the incarceration of the murderer in asylum or prison, by his emigration, or by his death from accident or natural causes. Despite the dramatic increase of such crimes in recent decades, both here and in the United States, no major offender is known to have committed suicide.

In the end, though, it is Macnaghten's readiness to accuse Druitt without verifying even basic facts about him that most discredits his case. For it is quickly apparent from Sir Melville's writings that he knew almost nothing about his suspect. Macnaghten believed that Druitt resided with his own people and absented himself from home at certain times. MCC records and Druitt's involvement in Blackheath's sporting activities, on the other hand, alike suggest that he lived at his school at 9 Eliot Place, possibly as senior resident master. Macnaghten thought that Druitt committed suicide 'on or about the 10th of November'. This was three weeks too early. The correct date was probably 1 December. Certainly it cannot have been sooner. Macnaghten a.s.serted that Druitt was about forty-one years old at the time of his death. In fact he was thirty-one. Above all, Macnaghten wrote of him as a doctor. His true professions were those of schoolmaster and barrister.

Recognizing the fragility of the case against Druitt, later writers have tried hard to unearth more credible evidence against him. No one has succeeded.

Donald Rumbelow wondered whether Montague might have been one of the three insane medical students investigated by the police after the Hanbury Street murder. Macnaghten tells us, however, that Druitt only became a suspect some years after he himself had joined the force in 1889. And although Druitt may have contemplated a medical career at one time he had never been a student at the London Hospital. The three suspected students had all attended this inst.i.tution but a search of the student registers there by Howells & Skinner did not discover Druitt's name.23 One of the most indefatigable Druittists was Dan Farson. When preparing his television programmes in 1959 he made an appeal for information on the Ripper from the public which elicited a deluge of replies. One correspondent, a Mr A. Knowles, told him that he had once seen a doc.u.ment in Australia ent.i.tled 'The East End Murderer I knew him.' After many years Mr Knowles' memory was understandably vague but he apparently recalled that the doc.u.ment had been written by a Lionel Druitt, Drewett or Drewery and that it had been privately printed by a Mr Fell of Dandenong in 1890. The significance of Knowles' letter was seemingly enhanced by the revelations of another correspondent Maurice Gould of Bexleyheath. Gould had been in Australia from 1925 to 1932 and there he had encountered not one, but two, men who claimed to know the ident.i.ty of Jack the Ripper. One of them was a freelance journalist named Edward MacNamara. MacNamara claimed that a man called Druitt, who had once lodged with a Mr W. G. Fell of Dandenong, had left Fell papers proving the Ripper's ident.i.ty. Somehow MacNamara had gained possession of them but, according to Gould, he 'would not part with [the papers] unless he received a considerable sum, 500 I think, which I had not got in those days.' The second man, McCarritty or McGarritty, was sixty when Gould met him in 1930: 'I lost track of him in a little place called, I think, Koo-Wee-Rup, near Lang-Lang, where Fell, also an Englishman, at times looked after him.'24 These tales do not inspire confidence. The contents of Knowles' letter cannot now be verified because Dan Farson's dossier of letters and papers, containing the original, was stolen from Television House during the time he was working on his programmes.25 And as it stands Gould's story is, quite frankly, unbelievable, for if MacNamara had the Druitt papers why did he not publish their secrets himself? In any case both informants, thinking back over many years, would unquestionably have been extremely confused over dates and other details. Yet Farson, knowing that Lionel Druitt, Montague's cousin, had emigrated to Australia in 1886, was tantalized by these clues and soon found an opportunity to pursue his search for Jack the Ripper in the land of the Southern Cross.

With Alan Dower, a 'laconic and rather tough' special correspondent of the Melbourne Truth, he drove into Western Gippsland, southeast of Melbourne, in 1961. The results were disappointing. The places certainly existed. They found Koo-Wee-Rup and Lang-Lang. But of 'The East End Murderer' there was not a trace. 'At Lang-Lang I saw the end in sight,' recalled Farson, 'when I heard of a storekeeper called Fell but when I met him he said he was no relation of the Fell who printed the doc.u.ment.' The last echo of the story was heard at the nearby town of Drouin. There Farson met the elderly Miss Stevens who remembered Dr Lionel Druitt and said that he had practised there in 1903. 'Someone in Victoria can still finally solve the riddle of Jack the Ripper,' Dower concluded. 'British TV investigator Dan Farson and I are sure of this having travelled 250 miles through West Gippsland this week seeking doc.u.ments and records that would provide the few missing clues.'

Subsequent research has not justified this optimism. Many attempts to trace 'The East End Murderer' have been made in Australian libraries, newspaper files and archives but without result. No one by the name of Fell is known to have lived in Dandenong in 1890 and in that year Dr Lionel Druitt definitely began to practise in St Arnaud, Victoria. It is just possible that Knowles saw the unrelated Jack the Ripper story that appeared in a supplement to the St Arnaud Mercury of 29 November 1890. But a more likely explanation is that Knowles' date of 1890 is wrong and that both he