Jack the Ripper: 100 Years of Investigation -- the Facts, the Fiction

JACK THE RIPPER During ten short weeks in 1888, a series of horrific murders shook a district in East London. Five women of the streets fell victim to a crazed killer whose obscene mutilations of his victims caused him to be called Jack the Ripper. Often, his crimes were preceded by notes to Scotland Yard boasting in graphic detail the crimes he planned to commit At other times, he would follow up his slayings with letters extolling himself as the mur· derer, and in one case, actually included a kidney from one of his victims! Yet, for all these clues, Scotland Yard remained baffled. Despite the unprecedented media at· tention, the strong efforts of the police, and the implor· ing of Oueen Victoria, the "Butcher of Whitechapel" was never captured. A hundred years after the murders were committed, his identity still remains an enigma. Here, in Terence Sharkeys fascinating new account of the killings, is your chance to succeed where Victo· rian forces of law and order failed. Can you solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper? Criminologists and amateur sleuths worldwide have puzzled over the mystery, but to no avail. Who could the killer have been? An aggrieved husband? A vengeful sufferer of venereal disease? A berserk abattoir worker? Nobody knows for sure. Terence Sharkey evocatively recreates the spine· chilling atmosphere of Victorian London and invites the reader to formulate his own theory by providing ex· amples of Jack the Ripper's letters to the police, pathol· ogist's reports, sensational newspaper coverage of the day, and a host of other fascinating documentation and evidence. There are also two chapters dealing with possible suspects. Sharkey carefully separates the facts from the gory tabloid headlines of the day, as well as from the myths and legends which have accumulated over (continued on back flap) JICK Ttlf lOOYEARS OF INVESTIGATION TERENCE SHARKEY DORSET PRESS NE\V YORK Copyright © 1987 Terence Sharkey All rights reserved. First published in Great Britain in 1987 by Ward Lock Ltd. This edition published by Dorset Press, a division of Marboro Books Corp., by arrangement with Cassel pic 1992 Dorset Press ISBN 0-88029-729-8 Printed and bound in the United States of America M 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 Contents Acknowledgments 6 List of victims 7 Preface 8 Introduction 10 1 Whitechapel 13 2 Not so pretty Polly 16 3 Street law 22 4 Dark Annie 25 5 Life, liberty and the pursuit of happy crimes 33 6 Long Liz 37 7 Kate 43 8 Warren's rabbits 50 9 Mary 56 10 Letters from hell 64 11 Person or persons unknown 76 12 Reflections of the Ripper 86 13 Identity parade 91 14 Pick your Ripper 128 Bibliography 142 Index 143 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Ripperologists, that band of dedicated sleuths, cannot research far without touching the tracks of certain luminaries in the field. A couple of the most well known are the two Donalds - McCormick and Rumbelow. The knowledge that they have shared with others through their books has been an inspiration and is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to Lynn Picknett, for her tireless picture research. The illustrations, letters and notices reproduced in this book were kindly supplied by the following: the author (page 139); BBC Hulton Picture Library (pages 19, 46, 52,61 and 81);John Frost (pages 17, 29, 34, 35,41 and 58); Guildhall Library (page 11); The Public Record Office, ref. MEPO 3 140 (pages 38, 65, 68, 74 and 125); Joseph Sickert (page 105); Topham Picture Library (pages 14, 27, 95, 99 and 130). AUTHOR'S NOTE The Decimal Currency Act of 1967, which swept away monetary and measurement titles that had been around for centuries, created prob lems for authors. Since then, a generation has grown up for whom any reference to shillings or sixpences is as alien as roubles or piastres. The resulting dilemma for the author who wants merely to get on with the storytelling is that bracketed explanations of traditional terms delay the essential action. Let us have none of this! If Mary Kelly charged half-a-crown for her favours that's what she charged, not 12! new pence. All values and measurements are given in pre-decimal and imperial terms. The Victims POLLY NICHOLS 31 August 1888 Buck's Row, Whitechapel ANNIE CHAPMAN 8 September 1888 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields ELIZABETH STRIDE 30 September 1888 Berner Street, Whitechapel CATHERINE EDDOWES 30 September 1888 Mitre Square, Aldgate MARY KELLY 9 November 1888 Miller's Court, Dorset Street, Spitalfields Pre/ace The twisted and mysterious killer known as Jack the Ripper, a riddle at the peak of his crimes, has become even more of an enigma as time passes. The taunting, boastful butcher of five- some say eleven women, left few clues. His was one of the most difficult types of murder to solve. Even today the prostitute-victim's necessarily furtive, solitary lifestyle often makes it impossible to track down her killer. The London policeman of 1888 could barely control the destitute thousands of East End inhabitants- a million souls of all types. Muggers, thugs, drun kards, immigrants -legal and illegal- were crowded together in the squalor that lay outside the City walls. The murder of prostitutes was no remarkable thing in those mean, dark streets, but in the space of three months and with five known victims the silent slayer brought panic, not just to the twelve hundred street walkers, but to the population as a whole. The police were powerless ... A century on from these events many think it unlikely that the identity of the Ripper will ever be known. The secret Home Office case papers, closed since 1892, are gradually being made public. But the haphazard collection in three manilla wrap-around files tied with pink tape offers few clues. The Macnaghten Papers, the notes written by the then Head of the CID, say little more. These documents and the admission by the chief officer that he had destroyed certain papers in order to protect the family of the major suspect all tend to make the trail of the Ripper a tantalizing but unending pursuit. The motives attributed to the murderer have been several. Sexual gratification, religious ritual, revenge for disease-contraction, or simply an attempt to clean up the city's seamy streets. But if there are several possible motives, there are scores of theories about the identity of the killer. Most have been based on the belief that the mutilations revealed a skilled hand; a doctor, a midwife, a butcher perhaps. Strong evidential links with the legal profession have been claimed, as was a link with Q!Ieen Victoria herself. The latest documents discovered and examined 8 ---------------------PREFACE--------------------- by eminent pathologists have done little to bring us closer to the truth. This study of the macabre slayings presents no author's prejudice, no convenient bending or omission of the facts but joins the reader in close active participation in the investigative process. A unique opportunity to consider personally: why the murders happened; why the victims were chosen; and who it was who stalked the streets of darkness, as well as the chance to test these considerations against known evidence. The horrifying nature of this greatest of unsolved mysteries calls for strong nerves. For the reader who undertakes the investigation, who follows the trail first to one door and then another, the route is both compelling and fascinating. East End children still skip to the rhyme: Jack the Ripper's dead And lying in his bed He cut his throat With Sunlight soap Jack the Ripper's dead. But the rhyme is wrong. True, the monster who dipped his knives into the flesh in Whitechapel has by now joined his victims, away from our world. But the gruesome memory of Jack truly lives on, the fascination of his unsolved crimes ensuring his fleeting figure immortality. Jack the Ripper lives. 9 Introduction ER GRAVE IS MARKED with a simple slab. The moss-covered granite H shows those who care, whose earthly remains lie here. Mary Jane Kelly's final resting place has a peace and obscurity that her death did not. Time has not been kind to St Patrick's church. The saintly shield that protected it from the worst of Hitler's bombs has been withdrawn and the hand of nature has taken over. Convolvulus sprouts inquisitive coiling fingers from broken rain-water pipes, ivy clings tenaciously to crumbling brickwork. Enormous monoliths that marked the Victorian graveyard have subsided drunkenly and lilac peeps through the broken slabs of foundations that are no more lasting than the doubtful morality of the age that spawned them. Around the plot the crumbling monuments stand in silent witness, their legends barely discernible after one hundred years of decay. Mary Kelly's grave would escape the notice of all but the most observant, but for those who seek, it is a reminder: one of five certain facts about a series of crimes that started in the courtyards of teeming tenements and whose vibrations shook at the pillars of the Establishment- and the Royal Family itself. There are four more of these facts, all established, all certain and all lying similarly interred, dotted around the cemeteries near Whitechapel and its neighbours Leyton and Manor Park. The facts have names and dates and these are certain too. As certain as the one remaining fact- that all shared their solitary calling of prostitution and that all met their death by the slashing knife of a maniacal killer. Beyond these few facts lies the vast blackness of the unknown.

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