List of Suspects for Pleasant Places of FL meeting November 2, 2013 Jack the Ripper - Anonymous Murderer It is important to note that Sir Melville Macnaghten, Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1889 named three suspects: (1) Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew, who lived in Whitechapel and was known to hate women and have strong homicidal tendencies. He was admitted to a lunatic asylum in March 1889; (2) Michael Ostrogg, who was a well-known criminal who spent the majority of his life in prison for theft. He was a con man and sneak thief with 25 or more aliases, and was eventually transferred to a lunatic asylum where he registered himself as a Jewish doctor; and (3) Montague John Druitt, a teacher at a boarding school in Blackheath who was dismissed from his teaching job in late Nov 1888 because of an unspecified ‘serious offence.’ He drowned himself in the Thames in Dec 1888. Macnaghten destroyed all the documents pointing to Druitt. In fact, all Sir Melville Macnaghten's personal files - he headed the CIS and had first hand knowledge of Scotland Yard's entire investigation - simply "vanished" shortly after his death. Inspector Abberline, heading the Ripper investigation, discredited Macnaghten’s suspects. He named his own suspect, George Chapman, whose real name was Severin Klosowski, a Polish barber’s assistant in Whitechapel who poisoned 3 wives and was hanged April 7, 1903. NOTE: Although he named Chapman, Chief Inspector Abberline's presentation walking stick is still preserved at Bramshill Police Staff College where the inscription reveals that the stick was presented to Abberline by his team of detectives at the 'conclusion of the inquiry'. According to Peter Underwood, Abberline believed beyond any doubt that the Ripper was Dr Alexander Pedachenko and the head depicted on the stick was based on his features. 18 of The Named Suspects – Alpha List NOTE: List prepared by Diane Gilbert Madsen from Excerpt compillations from BBC Home - ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A704567; Jack the Ripper & Me by Peter Underwood FRSA – From Casebook; http://voices.yahoo.com/Whos-Jack-the-Ripper- Some-Suspects-You-Wouldn’t-Suspect-348167.html.; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 1 1. HRH Prince Edward Albert Victor Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (8 January 1864 – 14 January 1892) was first mentioned in print as a potential suspect in 1962 when author Philippe Jullian published a biography of Clarence's father, Edward VII of the United Kingdom. Jullian made a passing reference to rumours that Clarence might have been responsible for the murders. Though Jullian did not detail the dates or sources of the rumour, it is possible that the rumour derived indirectly from Dr. Thomas E. A. Stowell. In 1960, Stowell told the rumour to writer Colin Wilson, who in turn told Harold Nicolson, a biographer loosely credited as a source of "hitherto unpublished anecdotes" in Jullian's book. Nicolson could have communicated Stowell's theory to Jullian. The theory was brought to major public attention in 1970 when Stowell published an article in The Criminologist which revealed his suspicion that Clarence had committed the murders after being driven mad by syphilis. The suggestion was widely dismissed, as Albert Victor had strong alibis for the murders, and it is unlikely that he suffered from syphilis. Stowell later denied implying that Clarence was the Ripper, but efforts to investigate his claims further were hampered, as Stowell was an old man, and he died from natural causes just days after the publication of his article. The same week, Stowell's son reported that he had burned his father's papers, saying "I read just sufficient to make certain that there was nothing of importance." Eddy frequently went slumming in the Whitechapel area. He supposedly met and had an affair with a shop girl named Annie Crook, who he kept in an apartment there. Annie became pregnant with his child and, according to one version of the story, married Eddy secretly in a Roman Catholic wedding. Other versions have the child being born out of wedlock. The Duke of Clarence allegedly made visits to a brothel in Cleveland Street in the East End. He had supposedly learned disembowelling techniques on hunting expeditions and was said to have suffered from syphilis. His official cause of death was given as pneumonia. 2. William Wallace Brodie Brodie confessed to all the Whitechapel murders while in a drunken stupor, in 1889. Scotland Yard checked into his whereabouts at the time and it was discovered that he was in South Africa between 6 September, 1888, and 15 July, 1889. 2 3. George Chapman Seweryn Antonowicz Kłosowski (alias George Chapman—no relation to victim Annie Chapman) (14 December 1865 – 7 April 1903) was born in Poland, but emigrated to the United Kingdom sometime between 1887 and 1888, shortly before the start of the murders. Between 1893 and 1894 he assumed the name of Chapman. He successively poisoned three of his wives, and was hanged for his crimes in 1903. At the time of the Ripper murders, he lived in Whitechapel, London, where he had been working as a barber. According to H. L. Adam, who wrote a book on the poisonings in 1930, Chapman - Inspector Frederick Abberline's favored suspect - was arrested and charged by Frederick Abberline, who was in charge of the Ripper investigation at the time. This was later retracted. Others disagree that Chapman is a likely culprit, as he murdered his three wives with poison, and it is uncommon (though not unheard of) for a serial killer to make such a drastic change in modus operandi. 4. Thomas Neil Cream (27 May 1850 – 15 November 1892) Cream was a doctor secretly specialising in abortions. He was born in Glasgow, educated in London and Canada, and entered practice in Canada and later in Chicago, Illinois. In 1881 he was found guilty of the fatal poisoning of his mistress's husband. He was imprisoned in the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, from November 1881 until his release on good behaviour on 31 July 1891. He moved to London, where he was living at the time of the Ripper murders. He habitually wrote to the Police giving false names and false accusations of a number of crimes. He resumed killing and was soon arrested. He was hanged for the murder of the Lambeth prostitutes on 15 November 1892 at Newgate Prison. According to some sources, his last words were reported as being "I am Jack the...", interpreted to mean Jack the Ripper. However, police officials who attended the execution made no mention of this alleged interrupted confession. Dr Cream raised suspicions following revelations that an American had been making enquiries as to the availability of certain organs at 3 medical schools in and around the Whitechapel district. Also, a letter received by the Police prior to the double killings of Elizabeth Stride and Kate Eddowes contained many 'Americanisms'. Cream was actually imprisoned awaiting trial at the time of the Ripper murders, and most authorities consider it impossible for him to be the culprit. However, Donald Bell suggested that he could have bribed officials and left the prison before his official release, and Sir Edward Marshall-Hall suspected that his prison term may have been served by a look-alike in his place. Such notions are unlikely, and contradict evidence given by the Illinois authorities, newspapers of the time, Cream's solicitors, Cream's family and Cream himself. 5. Montague John Druitt (15 August 1857 – early December 1888) A Dorset-born barrister who worked to supplement his income as an assistant schoolmaster in Blackheath, London. A schoolmaster, Druitt studied medicine for a time and became a barrister. He was from a good family and was well educated. He was also criminally insane. Two days after he was dismissed from his teaching job at a Blackheath school in late November 1888 because of an unspecified ‘serious offence,’ he committed suicide by drowning himself in the River Thames. He left a note saying: Since Friday I felt I was going to be like Mother and the best thing for me was to die. The note was found on his decomposed body recovered from the Thames near Chiswick on 31 Dec 1888. Some modern authors suggest that Druitt was homosexual, that he was dismissed because of this and that it may have driven him to suicide. However, his mother and his grandmother both suffered mental health problems, and it is possible that he was dismissed because of an underlying hereditary psychiatric illness. His death shortly after the last canonical murder (which took place on 9 Nov 1888) led Assistant Chief Constable Sir Melville Macnaghten to name him as a suspect in a memorandum of 23 February 1894. However, Macnaghten incorrectly described the 31-year-old barrister as a 41-year-old doctor. On 1 September, the day after the first canonical murder, Druitt was in Dorset playing cricket, and most experts now believe that the killer was local to Whitechapel, whereas Druitt lived miles away on the other side of the Thames in Kent. Inspector Frederick Abberline appeared to dismiss Druitt as a serious suspect on the basis that the only evidence against him was the coincidental timing of his suicide shortly after a murder considered by some to be the final one in the series. 4 Druitt's suicide made him a convenient scapegoat and the police closed the Ripper file. 6. Sir William Gull (31 December 1816 – 29 January 1890) was physician-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. He was named as the Ripper as part of the evolution of the widely discredited Masonic/royal conspiracy theory outlined in such books as Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution.