Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Who was "Jack the Ripper"?

A series of murders that took place in the East End of London from August to November 1888 were blamed on an unidentified assailant known as "Jack the Ripper". Since that time, the identity of the killer has been hotly debated, and over one hundred Jack the Ripper suspects have been proposed. Though many theories have been advanced, experts find none widely persuasive, and some can hardly be taken seriously at all.

Jack the Ripper is the world’s most famous serial killer. Yet his reign of terror lasted a mere 10 weeks and was confined to a small area of the Victorian Metropolis. It is difficult today to say how many victims he actually had, though it is generally agreed that there were five. These five were Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly. The first victim, Mary Nichols, was murdered on August 31st 1888. The final victim, Mary Kelly, was murdered on 9th November 1888.

The killings took place in one of the most crime ridden parts of Victorian London, and all the victims were common street prostitutes. The question that has eluded dedicated researchers for over a hundred years now is who was Jack the Ripper? Obviously today it is virtually impossible to answer this question with 100% certainty. We can look at what the detectives of the time, those who investigated the killings, had to say. But in order to even attempt to answer the question we must first ask and answer another question. What happened to Jack the Ripper to stop him killing?

If we accept that Mary Kelly was the last victim of Jack the Ripper, then we must also accept that something happened to the killer shortly after the bloodbath in Miller’s Court (the place where Mary Kelly lived and where she was murdered in the early hours of 9th November 1888). Murderers such as this don’t stop killing. They may lie low for a while, perhaps even for many years. But the desire to kill remains and can be re-awakened at anytime, unless something happens to the murderer to stop him.

In the case of Jack the Ripper that something was doubtless one of four things. He may have died, possibly by his own hand, shortly after he killed Mary Kelly. He may have been living with his family and they either realised he was insane and incarcerated him in a lunatic asylum, or possibly even handed him over to the police. A third, though unlikely, explanation is that he moved somewhere else continued killing and the connection was never made. This is an unlikely explanation since the murders were reported all over the world, and had a similar killing spree occurred somewhere else there is little doubt that the connection would have been made. The fourth and most likely scenario, however, is that at some stage in the days or months that followed the murder of Mary Kelly the police finally got the break they’d been hoping for since the killings began, and Jack the Ripper was finally caught. So having considered the options as to what happened to the murderer we can now turn our attentions to the question everybody wants to know. Who was he?

Throughout the autumn of 1888 the Victorian police were arresting suspect after suspect but each time they arrested a likely looking candidate they were either able to provide cast iron alibis for their whereabouts on the nights of the murders, or else were exonerated by actual events when the killer struck again whilst they were in police custody.

On 19th September the Chief of London police (Metropolitan Police Commissioner) Sir Charles Warren wrote to the Home Office to update them on progress, or to be more precise lack progress, in the police investigation. “A great number of clues have been examined & exhausted without finding anything suspicious. A large staff of men are employed and every point is being examined which seems to offer any prospect of a discovery.” He also mentioned three men against whom the police had suspicions.

The first was Jacob Isenschmid, an insane pork butcher from Switzerland who had been arrested at Holloway and was now in an asylum. Abberline had written of this suspect on 18th September “Although at present we are unable to procure any evidence any evidence to connect him with the murders, he appears to be the most likely person that has come under our notice to have committed the crimes.” Apparently two doctors Dr Cowan and Dr Landseer had alerted the police to the fact that this man, whom they knew to be a lunatic, was the murderer. His landlord told the police that he was absent from his lodgings during the night when Annie Chapman was murdered. His estranged wife, Mary, told Sergeant Thicke that although her husband was violent she did not thing he would “…injure anyone but me. I think he would kill me if he had the chance.” But, as with Ludwig, Isenschmid was also not the murderer, for on the 30th September, when the killer struck again, the mad Swiss Pork Butcher was caged in an asylum.

Warren’s second suspect was Oswald Puckeridge who had been “released from an asylum on 4th August [and who] has threatened to rip people up. He is being looked for but cannot be found as yet.” Not a great deal has been found about Puckeridge, and even less is known about why the police suspected him. It would seem that the police may have traced him and eliminated him as a suspect, since his name was not included on later lists of suspects.

The final suspect is even more elusive since Warren doesn’t identify him but merely states that “A brothel keeper who will not give her address or name writs to say that a man living in her house was seen with blood on him on morning of murder. She described his appearance & said where he might be seen. When the detectives came near him he bolted, got away & there is no clue to the writer of the letter.”

Evidently the police were no nearer catching the killer by the end of September 1888 than they had been at the start of Jack the Ripper’s killing spree. But the suspects being brought in and questioned at least give us an insight into the type of person the police thought they were dealing with and so provide us with something of an insight into the police thinking at the height of the Jack the Ripper scare.

However, it is now time to look beyond the autumn of terror and look at the suspects that the police had after the final Jack the Ripper murder, that of Mary Kelly on the 9th November 1888.

On 13th February 1894 The Sun Newspaper began a series of articles that did not reveal the name of their suspect but were obviously referring to one Thomas Hayne Cutbush. Thomas is said to have contracted syphilis in 1888 after which he began suffering paranoid delusions. On March 5th 1891 he was detained at Lambeth Infirmary as a wandering lunatic, but he escaped within hours. Over the next few days he stabbed a lady named Florence Grace Johnson, using a knife he had purchased in Houndsditch the week before. He then attempted to stab another lady, Isabelle Frazer Anderson before being arrested on 9th March 1891. He was arraigned at the London County Sessions in April 1891, found to be insane and was sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty's Pleasure. He was sent to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum where he remained until his death in 1903.

Cutbush was the nephew of Superintendent Charles Henry Cutbush, who was responsible for supplies and pay at Scotland Yard. Doubtless he was one of the “relatives” referred to in the articles as being “in positions which would make them a target for the natural curiosity...” In 1896 Superintendent Cutbush shot himself in the head in his own kitchen in the presence of his daughter.

The Police, it appears, had already considered and looked into the possibility of Cutbush’s being Jack the Ripper and had ruled him out as a suspect. But, as a result of The Sun’s accusations, Melville Macnaghten was asked to prepare a report in which he refuted the newspapers allegations. Now known as the Macnaghten Memoranda this report was one of the first official documents to provide an insight into who the police at the time thought the killer was. Macnagheten mentions three suspects who were more likely to have been the murderer than Cutbush. It is important to note that Macnaghten does not say any of the three were Jack the Ripper, just that they were more plausible suspects than Cutbush. Referring to the killings Macnaghten wrote:

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

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

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

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

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