Jack the Ripper

by The Whitechapel Society

  Chapman’s known murderous activities started around May 1897. If Francis Coles was a Chapman victim, then there was an interval of just over six years. This is not without precedent; Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, had an interval of five years and ten months between his first two attacks.

  The description given by George Hutchinson of the man seen with Mary Jane Kelly was: 5ft 6in tall, aged around thirty-four, with a dark complexion and a moustache curled at the end. Other than the age, this fits Chapman well. At the time of the Kelly murder, Chapman would have been twenty-three. However, the photograph of Chapman with Bessie Taylor and another with Maud Marsh, when Chapman would have been in his mid-thirties, show a much older looking man. At his trial, Lucy Baderski’s brother and sister both said that Chapman’s appearance had changed very little since the first time they had met him.

  It was thought that Jack the Ripper had medical knowledge, particularly with reference to the case of Catherine Eddowes. Chapman undoubtedly had the medical knowledge to remove this poor woman’s kidney and uterus.

  All of this is, of course, circumstantial evidence. Is there an argument against Chapman being Jack the Ripper? If Chapman were the Whitechapel murderer, he would have changed from murdering prostitutes, who were probably strangers to him, to murdering women from an entirely ‘respectable’ class who were known – indeed were close – to him. He would have changed from cutting throats and savagely quick and highly violent deaths – each one more vicious than the last – to the slow, drip-drip, long, drawn-out deaths that antimony produces. However, Abberline addressed that very point in the Pall Mall Gazette interview, when he said, ‘…incentive changes, but fiendishness is not eradicated. The victims too, you will notice, continue to be women; but they were of different classes, and obviously call for different methods of despatch.’ John Douglas, of the Behavioural Science Unit of the FBI, says on his website that serial murders generally surface in their mid to late twenties (Chapman would have been nearly twenty-four during the Autumn of Terror). He would argue that Chapman did not start killing when he was in his mid-thirties; it is likely he would have started about ten years earlier. In Douglas’s opinion, experience will bring sophistication to a multiple killer’s methods, and this is certainly a description that can be applied to Chapman. He was clearly an intelligent man and was on a learning curve.

  On balance then, was this man Jack the Ripper? Unlike most other suggested subjects, he is a known killer, living in the right place at the right time. So, yes ladies and gentlemen, I offer you Severin Klosowski, aka George Chapman, as Jack the Ripper.

  Epilogue

  So what became of Lucy Baderski and her daughter Cecilia Klosowski?

  Around 1898, Lucy met a fellow Pole, a cabinet maker, and together they had a son in 1899. They were living in Limehouse. They married in June 1903, two months after Chapman was hung, and went on to have four more children. By 1911 the family had moved to Poplar.44

  Cecilia married in 1908. She was seventeen; her husband being fourteen years her senior. Their marriage certificate shows that she was living in Poplar at the time of her union and that her husband came from Whitechapel. They had five children together, moving after the birth of the second child from Whitechapel to West Ham.45

  Notes

  1. Adam, H. L., Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series) (William Hodge & Co., 1930), pp.219 –223

  2. ibid., p.63

  3. ibid., p.64

  4. Marriage certificate

  5. Birth & Death certificates

  6. Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series), p.65

  7. Birth certificate

  8. Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series), p.65

  9. Birth certificate

  10. Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series), p.101

  11. ibid., p.203

  12. ibid., p.123

  13. ibid., p.203

  14. ibid., p.205

  15. ibid., p.207

  16. ibid., p.211

  17. ibid., pp.133–34

  18. ibid., pp.140–43

  19. ibid., p.72

  20. ibid., pp.98–100

  21. ibid., p.170

  22. ibid., p.189

  23. ibid., p.104

  24. ibid., p.73

  25. ibid., p.82

  26. ibid., pp.102–3

  27. ibid., p.91

  28. ibid., p.107

  29. ibid., p.146

  30. ibid., p.148

  31. ibid., p.198

  32. ibid., p.57

  33. ibid., pp.68-71

  34. ibid., p.59

  35. ibid., p.33–4

  36. ibid., pp.91–6

  37. ibid., pp.152–64

  38. ibid., p.164

  39. ibid., p.63

  40. Birth certificate

  41. Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series), p.65

  42. Birth certificate

  43. Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series), p.65

  44. Birth certificate; Marriage certificate; Census

  45. ibid.

  Bibliography

  Adam, H. L., Trial of George Chapman (Notable British Trials Series), (William Hodge & Co., 1930)

  Susan Parry is a retired deputy head teacher of a secondary school and is now teaching mathematics part-time. She has been a member of The Whitechapel Society since the very beginning and took on the role of secretary, and later treasurer, in 2006. Sue lives in Norfolk with her husband Phil, a chartered accountant, and they have three children and four grandchildren.

  4

  More likely than Cutbush: Montague John Druitt

  Adrian Morris

  In February 1894, an article appeared in a British newspaper claiming to be an exposé on the real identity of a murderer who had been known to the world as Jack the Ripper. These articles, produced in The Sun newspaper, would be serialised for a number of issues.

  They generated great interest and aroused the suspicions of the police, who realised that the arrest of this suspect, in 1891, could have had more to it, which might, in turn, make it worthwhile following up on The Sun’s investigation. The suspect in question was Thomas Hayne Cutbush. He had been arrested for assaulting a female victim and attempting to assault another by violent attacks with a knife, which he had purchased in Houndsditch. The case resulted in his apprehension and permanent detention in Broadmoor, in 1891.

  There was serious concern that the then Home Secretary, the future Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, would be bombarded with questions in Parliament as a result of The Sun’s articles. In 1894, it eventually fell to the Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police, Melville Macnaghten, to compile a memorandum to provide the Home Secretary with more essential information about both the Cutbush and the Jack the Ripper cases.

  Melville Macnaghten appeared to consult a number of documents – albeit casually in some cases – and, possibly, used remembered details from previous readings or briefings before referring to the original case notes on the Cutbush case in compiling his memoranda in 1894. It must be stressed that this document was private, and the information was only meant to be used, if the Home Secretary needed to fall back on it to satisfy Parliament of The Sun’s allegations being unfounded.

  An interesting, and indeed vital, aspect of Macnaghten’s Memoranda was that he looked at a number of suspects who had been in the minds of the higher echelons of the Metropolitan Police during, or after, the Whitechapel Murders investigation. Macnaghten’s aim was to prove, to the Home Secretary, that there were better Jack the Ripper suspects than Thomas Cutbush.

  ‘I may mention the cases of three men, any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders…’ So began a pivotal sentence in one of the draft documents that made up part of Macnaghten’s Memoranda. Macnaghten would go on to name his three most likely suspects who were better placed, in his mind at least, to be the Whitechapel murderer. His second
and third suspects were men who were, at one time, on the police files, as there had been some serious investigations carried out upon them.

  One of the suspects, Michael Ostrog, was a highly disreputable character. He was originally from the Russian Empire and was known to assume a wide variety of aliases in the commission of his, often, outlandish crimes. The other suspect was a local man called Kosminski, who had been detained in a lunatic asylum some years after the murders, but had fallen under some suspicion from the police in the immediate period following the murders. The main suspect on Macnaghten’s list – a suspect that he would favour as being the best candidate for being Jack the Ripper – was a man called Montague John Druitt.

  Macnaghten, in one of the two existing versions of the memoranda (there was some evidence that a third version existed), said of Druitt:

  Mr M.J. Druitt a doctor of about forty-one years of age and 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 sexually insane.

  Interesting reading; Macnaghten obviously saw the suspicion against Druitt as pretty powerful, to the point of making Druitt his prime suspect.

  What do we make of Macnaghten’s suspicion of Montague John Druitt? It is interesting that Macnaghten refers to ‘private information’ which threw this suspect’s name within the sweep of his suspicion. Macnaghten also talks of the family’s suspicion against Druitt, claiming they thought he was Jack the Ripper. This would suggest that Macnaghten may have received this information from the family of Druitt. Certainly – and this is a continuing matter of conjecture – Macnaghten’s view that Druitt was a primary suspect is at odds with the opinions of the rest of the police hierarchy who were, in many cases, better placed than he was to assign suspicion on this suspect or that. Some did this, as with the official head of the investigation, Dr Robert Anderson, who was the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police force in 1888. He went for Kosminski, another suspect mentioned in Macnaghten’s Memoranda. Other police officials engaged in the case, such as Inspector Abberline, would refute any suspicion against Druitt. Druitt seems to have been introduced by Macnaghten alone, as there really was no consensus among the police, in 1888, as to who the Whitechapel murderer might have been.

  The ‘private information’ Macnaghten refers to and the fact that ‘his [Druitt’s] own family suspected’ that he could have been Jack the Ripper, implies that Druitt’s family made this information known to Macnaghten themselves, or through a third party. Remember, the details of the Macnaghten’s Memoranda were strictly private and never meant for public consumption. There is some evidence to show that the Druitt family had links to a set of families known as the Elton and Mayo families, respectively. They would maintain strong links, even after many of them had emigrated to Australia in the nineteenth century. It is interesting to note that the private secretary to the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, in 1888 – during the Whitechapel Murders – was Walter Ernest Boultbee. Boultbee was married to Ellen Baker, a niece of Alfred Mayo, who was himself related to Montague John Druitt’s father, Thomas. Also, Macnaghten’s father seems to have had some dealings with the Druitt family at some official (and possibly private) level. This could possibly explain Macnaghten’s ‘private information’, and how he came by it.

  When looking closely at what Macnaghten says about his prime suspect Druitt, we can see he gets a number of key things incorrect. Macnaghten’s Memoranda is strewn with unintentional errors; they are minor in most instances, but it makes one feel that he was compiling the information largely from memory or remembrances of briefings and documents he may have consulted a good deal of time before. It is of interest to note that when writing his memoirs Days of My Years, in 1913, Macnaghten ruefully yielded to the reliance on memory and recollections rather than consult detailed notes. Errors pertaining to Druitt’s age and profession are among the most obvious. Druitt was thirty-one years old, not forty-one. He was a barrister and school master not a doctor. One would expect – it would not be too difficult to concede – that if Macnaghten had been consulting a document detailing certain suspicions on Druitt contained in the police or Home Office files, he might have recorded these fundamentals accurately. Reaching into the penumbra of his mind, Macnaghten may even have got Druitt’s first name wrong on another variant version of this memorandum, referring to him as Michael. This does not necessarily preclude the existence of a police file on Druitt, but the specific language used by Macnaghten to describe the suspects Kosminski and Ostrog was more typical of a police report. We know that both these suspects were under some kind of police suspicion during the wider Whitechapel Murders investigation. Intriguingly, Macnaghten has a more accurate grasp on the details surrounding Druitt’s suicide, referring to possessions found on Druitt’s body: ‘season ticket between Blackheath & London.’

  Interestingly, Macnaghten refers to Druitt as having been ‘sexually insane’. This is a rather peculiar pronouncement because it would appear to account, at first glance, for Druitt’s suspicion of being the Whitechapel murderer. However, often the term ‘sexually insane’, when used in its late Victorian context, intimated that someone was believed to be a ‘sexual deviant’ or homosexual. This was the period following the passing of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, which enshrined the illegality of sexual acts between males, making it a criminal act punishable with a custodial sentence.

  Another indictment of Druitt’s alleged mental state, following his death, was the Coroner’s jury finding his death to be a result of ‘suicide whilst of unsound mind’. Suicide, although more sympathetically viewed by the late Victorians, was still outlawed and maintained some of the old stigma it had in previous generations. Overwhelmingly, suicide could be seen as an act of madness at one end of the scale, or desperation at the other, but was still labelled ‘unsound mind’.

  The Coroner’s inquest also dug deeper into Druitt’s circumstances prior to his death. He had been a schoolmaster at Mr George Valentine’s school, in Blackheath, from 1880. It transpired that he had been dismissed by Valentine on 30 November, shortly before his suicide, for getting into ‘serious trouble’ at the school. Again, the full nature of this serious trouble has been open to conjecture; however, many feel it could possibly have involved unsuitable conduct against one of the pupils there. The school itself was an all-male establishment, which was a sort of finishing school for older boys preparing for university and the army – basically, the Victorian elite. This is an obvious conclusion to make, but there is nothing to back it up. Merely coupling it with Macnaghten’s term, ‘sexual insanity’ does not necessarily apply to his dismissal, but it may be more relevant to Druitt’s perceived guilt of being a sexual serial murderer of women.

  So, it is to Macnaghten’s accusation of guilt towards Druitt that we must look. The ‘private information’ is mentioned in the same sentence as the family’s belief that Druitt was the Ripper. We can only wonder at what this might be and accept speculations, as I have done previously. A powerful reason for suspecting Druitt was the timing of his suicide, in late November/early December 1888; perfect for the traditionally accepted – but not universally so – final murder in the Ripper series; that of Mary Kelly in early November. Macnaghten would highlight this point in another part of his memoranda, when he theorised that ‘…the ripper (sic) brain gave way altogether after his glut in Miller’s Court and that he then committed suicide.’ Elsewhere Macnaghten would go on to add, ‘…the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become.’

  The mere circumstance and timing of his death has, undoubtedly, made Montague John Druitt one of the most persisten
t of all suspects since he was fully revealed to the wider world in the 1950s. This has been given extra buoyancy by the forceful fact that a high-ranking police official, although one who did not take part in the Whitechapel murder investigation in 1888, named Druitt as a subject in a clandestine report.

  Nevertheless, Druitt’s suicide, although exquisitely timed for the assumed ending of the murder series in late 1888, is still the only real circumstantial evidence we have against Druitt. The thoroughly impenetrable ‘private information’ from Druitt’s family, which might yield more detailed investigation and debate, is mere speculation. Of course, added to these complexities, we must always acknowledge the sine qua non that all Jack the Ripper suspects must display a seriously valid account for the abrupt ending of the murder series. Druitt fits into this very well.

  It is only fair then, to look deeper into the real element of the pertinacity of suspicion against Druitt – his suicide. Aside from the difficulty in establishing a proper and detailed examination of the familial insights, we must assume that the major suspicion against Druitt is predicated on his suicide. Taking out of the equation the sophistry of murder upon Druitt, it is his suicide that we must account for.

  If Druitt was Jack the Ripper, his suicide is easily explained. As Macnaghten said, by associational intimation, Druitt’s mind seemed to have given way ‘after his awful glut in Miller’s Court…’ Therefore, remorse took hold of him and he took the only way out, as he saw it. Some serial killers may attempt suicide, but there are many more that do not.

  A more viable explanation for Druitt’s suicide may be more obvious; namely, the circumstances surrounding his dismissal from Mr Valentine’s school. One might assume – and assumption it is – that if Druitt had been involved in an illegal act of a sexual nature, he may have lost the rigid esprit de corps amongst his peers. Druitt did, however, seemingly avoid arrest for this ‘serious trouble’ and was only dismissed. Of course, we can only assume that this was the reason for his dismissal – there is no shred of evidence to confirm it. Other viable reasons could equally be a conflict with Mr Valentine, or theft, or dereliction of duty. This still brings us back to the subject of Druitt’s suicide, and ultimately how it fits into any significant suspicion against him.