(2) Kosminski, a Polish Jew and resident in Whitechapel. This man became insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, especially of the prostitute class, and had strong homicidal tendencies. He was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. There were many crimes connected with this man which made him a strong ‘suspect’.
(3) Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor, and a convict, who was frequently 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.
Next to nothing is known about Kosminski and Ostrog. Much more has since been revealed about Montague Druitt.
Born on 15 August 1857 at Wimborne in Dorset, he was educated at Winchester College, where he was a prefect, played cricket for the First Eleven, was the best at playing Five’s, and won a scholarship to New College, Oxford. There he studied Classics and obtained a Third Class Honours degree in 1880. He may then have studied medicine for a year (he had a cousin who was a doctor) before switching to law, enrolling at the Inner Temple in May 1882. While he studied law, he taught at a crammer’s school in Blackheath, where forty-two boys were boarders. He was called to the Bar in April 1885. His father died in September, after which Druitt rented chambers at 9 King’s Bench Walk in the Temple. His career as a barrister was undistinguished and unrewarding; he continued to teach at the Blackheath school until he was sacked around 1 December 1888. The reason for the dismissal is not known: he may have shown homosexual tendencies or behaved unreasonably or oddly – the latter being not unlikely, as his mother had been certified as insane in July that year and put in a mental home in Chiswick. He apparently feared for his own sanity. Last seen alive on Monday, 3 December 1888, he penned a note – ‘Since Friday I felt I was going to be like Mother and the best thing was for me to die’ – weighted the pockets of his overcoat with stones and jumped or waded into the Thames. His body was found floating in the river near Chiswick on Monday, 31 December, four weeks after his disappearance. He was thirty-one.
Was he the Ripper? We know that he was a keen cricketer. A member of the MCC, for several years he played for Blackheath and also for teams in Dorset. The day after Mary Ann Nichols was murdered (about 3.30 am on Friday, 31 August), MJ Druitt played cricket for Canford against Wimborne in Dorset (on Saturday, 1 September). Some five hours after the murder of Annie Chapman (about 5.45 am on Saturday, 8 September) Druitt was playing cricket for Blackheath in south London. Where was he, one wonders, on the night of 29-30 September and at dawn on Friday, 9 November? To the question ‘Could he have committed such atrocious crimes and then played cricket?’ the answer must be ‘Yes.’
Of all the suspects, Druitt and Kosminski seem the ones most likely, from what we know now, to have been the Whitechapel murderer. But as in every other case there is no definite, conclusive proof. Other theories, about doctors, butchers, Jews, freemasons, lodgers, other murderers and a member of the monarchy (the Duke of Clarence), may reasonably, if regretfully, be dismissed. Of all the books written about the Whitechapel murders, the most useful are those by Donald Rumbelow, a police sergeant in the City, and Richard Whittington-Egan (see the Bibliography).
One area of interest remains – the actual scenes of the murders and the addresses of the victims: Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly. Why Whitechapel – rather than other areas of prostitution? And why, when about 1,200 prostitutes are said to have worked in Whitechapel, did the five murdered women, although murdered some distance apart, all live within a few hundred yards of each other? It is conceivable that they not only visited the same pubs and touted for custom in the same streets, but actually knew each other, at least by sight. Annie Chapman lived in 35 Dorset Street – so did Jack Pizer and Michael Kidney, with whom Elizabeth Stride used to live. Mary Kelly lived in and was killed at the back of 26 Dorset Street. Nichols, Stride and Eddowes all lodged at one time or another in Flower and Dean Street – as the last two also did in Fashion Street. Is it coincidence that these five possible acquaintances were killed?
It’s also possible that all five women were neighbours of the Ripper and were known to him, at least by sight, and that he also lived in or near Flower and Dean Street or Fashion Street or Thrawl Street, which were all parallel to each other and led off the main north-south artery in Whitechapel, Commercial Street. It seems highly probable that the Ripper was a local man, well acquainted with all the streets, alleys, yards, pubs and lodging houses in the area, as well as the beats paraded nightly by the police. With bloody clothes he can’t have ventured far from the scenes of the murders, and a local man would have known the darkest, most poorly lit and less-populated routes back to where he lived. The cut-off piece of Eddowes’s bloodstained apron was found in Goulston Street, north-east of Mitre Square where Eddowes died. North-east of Goulston Street itself were the parallel streets of Flower and Dean, Fashion and Thrawl. It’s likely that the Ripper, hurrying away from Mitre Square, was on his way home when he dropped or discarded the piece of apron.
He took great risks, killing where he did and displaying the bodies as he did. But that must have been part of his murderous urge, the thrill of the kill. And he killed in order to cut, not strangle his victims, swiftly and savagely using his knife. And if his victims knew him, at least by sight, they would not have felt unduly alarmed, especially if his manner and appearance were unexceptional, and not evidently those of a maniac or murderous psychopath, as fiction pictures him, but pleasant and persuasive, as actual murderers often are.
From the many statements made by witnesses who might have seen him before or after the murders, some generalisations might be made – he was about thirty, about 5 ft 6 in and wore a hat or cap and had a moustache. And he probably lived in or near Flower and Dean Street, selecting his victims from among the many prostitutes he lived among.
FLORENCE MAYBRICK
THE MURDER OF MR MAYBRICK, 1889
Judges cannot ever be truly impartial, being inevitably led by their own opinions, background, education, sex and social position to exhibit an occasionally less than objective attitude to the accused, especially if the accused is a woman. Such bias was shown by the learned gentlemen who judged Edith Thompson, Alma Rattenbury, Ruth Ellis – and Florence Maybrick.
Miss Florence Elizabeth Chandler was an American, a Southern belle from Alabama, who at the age of eighteen married Mr James Maybrick in London on 27 July 1881. She was the daughter of a banker from Mobile, and she and her future husband met on the White Star liner Baltic when she was on a tour of Europe with her mother. He was a forty-two-year-old English cotton-broker, a frequent visitor to America. His two brothers disapproved of the match, believing that Florence was as flighty, as suspect, as her thrice-married mother, Baroness von Roques.
The Maybricks settled in Liverpool in 1884, eventually purchasing an imposing mansion, Battlecrease House (complete with modern flush toilets), in a southern suburb of the city called Aigburth. Living beyond their means, they were attended by four servants: a cook, two maids, and a nanny called Alice Yapp, who looked after the two young Maybrick children, a boy and a girl. Mrs Maybrick was given £7 a week by her husband to pay not only for the food and domestic requirements but also all the servants’ wages. Naturally, she was soon in debt.
James Maybrick was a boorish, irascible man, and a lifelong hypochondriac. Ever complaining of being out of sorts, of pains and numbness and problems with his liver and his nerves, he was a believer in homoeopathic medicines, and was forever swallowing pills and pick-me-ups to improve his health and sexual potency; the mixtures included strychnine and arsenic. ‘I think I know a good deal of medicine,’ he once told a doctor.
He maintained a mistress on the side, as Florence discovered by chance in 1887. The unhappy young woman found some consolation in the arms of one of her husband’s Liverpool friends, a tall and handsome young bachelor, Alfred Brierley, whom she met at a dance at Battlecrease House
. In March 1889, the couple spent a weekend together in a London hotel. Mrs Maybrick made the arrangements. They planned to be there a week, but for some reason they left the hotel – Flatman’s in Henrietta Street – on the Monday, when Brierley paid the bill; Mrs Maybrick spent the rest of the week with friends. She said later: ‘Before we parted, he gave me to understand that he cared for somebody else and could not marry me, and that rather than face the disgrace of discovery he would blow his brains out. I then had such a revulsion of feeling I said we must end our intimacy at once.’ She returned to Liverpool on Friday, 28 March.
The next day, she went to Aintree with her husband for the Grand National. There she happened to meet Brierley, and despite her revulsion and her husband’s wishes, she left his carriage and walked up the course with the young man. Maybrick was furious. She returned home on her own. He arrived ten minutes later. There was a row and at one point he punched her. Alice Yapp said later: ‘I heard Mr Maybrick say to Mrs Maybrick: “This scandal will be all over the town tomorrow!” They then went down into the hall, and I heard Mr Maybrick say: “Florrie, I never thought you would come to this.” They then went into the vestibule, and I heard Mr Maybrick say: “If you once cross this threshold you shall never enter these doors again!’” Mrs Maybrick had in fact ordered a cab and threatened to walk out of the house, but Nanny Yapp intervened, reminding her of her children – ‘I put my arm around her waist and took her upstairs. I made the bed for her that night and she slept in the dressing-room.’
On Sunday, Mr Maybrick made a new will, excluding his wife. She went to see the family doctor, Dr Hopper, who said later:
She complained that she was very unwell, that she had been up all night … and she asked my advice. I saw that she had a black eye. She said that her husband had been very unkind to her … and he had beaten her … She said that she had a very strong feeling against him, and could not bear him to come near her.
She wanted a divorce. But the doctor was able to effect a reconciliation. She asked her husband’s forgiveness for considerable debts she had incurred (£1,200) and he paid them off – presumably with difficulty, as he was in debt himself.
On 13 April, Mr Maybrick journeyed to London on business connected with his wife’s debts and stayed with his bachelor brother, Michael Maybrick, a singer and composer, in his flat in Wellington Mansions, Regents Park. Using the pseudonym Stephen Adams, Michael composed such hymns as ‘The Holy City’ and ‘Star of Bethlehem’. James Maybrick consulted Michael’s doctor, complaining of pains in his head and numbness in his right leg. After an hour-long examination the doctor concluded there was very little wrong with him, apart from indigestion, and he prescribed an aperient, a tonic, and liver pills. Mr Maybrick returned to Liverpool on 22 April.
Soon after this, he met a friend of his – Sir James Poole, a former mayor of Liverpool, in the Palatine Club – who said later: ‘Someone made the remark that it was becoming the common custom to take poisonous medicines. [Maybrick] had an impetuous way and he blurted out: “I take poisonous medicines.” I said: “How horrid! Don’t you know, my dear friend, that the more you take of these things the more you require, and you will go on till they carry you off?”’ The previous year, in June, Mrs Maybrick had visited Dr Hopper. He said later: ‘She told me that Mr Maybrick was in the habit of taking some very strong medicine which had a bad influence on him; for he always seemed worse after each dose. She wished me to see him about it, as he was very reticent in the matter.’
There seems no doubt that he was an eater of arsenic, among other poisons, and three American witnesses at the trial vouched that he often took arsenic in a cup of beef tea, saying it was ‘meat and liquor to him’ and ‘I take it when I can get it.’ A chemist from Norfolk in Virginia attested to the fact that Mr Maybrick’s consumption of ‘liquor arsenicalis’ given in a tonic, increased over eighteen months by 75 per cent.
On or about Monday, 23 April, Mrs Maybrick bought one dozen flypapers from a chemist in Aigburth. She told him that the flies were troublesome in her kitchen. Each paper contained about one grain of arsenic, although the experts at her trial disagreed about the actual amount, saying it depended on whether the arsenic was extracted by boiling the papers or by soaking them in cold water.
On or about that Monday, flypapers were seen by the nanny and a maid soaking in a basin on the Maybricks’ bedroom wash-stand. Mrs Maybrick later explained that the arsenic which she extracted from those flypapers was for a cosmetic preparation, a face-wash, something she had used for years; she wanted to clear up some skin trouble before going to a ball. A hairdresser, Mr Bioletti, later agreed that there was ‘an impression among ladies that it is good for the complexion’. It was also used, he said, as a depilatory.
The following Saturday, the 27th, Mr Maybrick felt funny and was sick. He went to the Wirrall Races in the afternoon, got wet in the rain, and later dined with friends; his hands were so unsteady that he upset some wine.
On Sunday morning the children’s doctor, Dr Humphreys, was sent for. Mr Maybrick was in bed, complaining about pains in his chest and his heart, caused, he said, by a strong cup of tea. He was afraid of becoming paralyzed. The doctor prescribed some diluted prussic acid, and forbade him to drink anything other than soda water and milk. Mrs Maybrick told the doctor that her husband had taken an overdose of strychnine. Two months earlier she had spoken to him about her husband’s habit of dosing himself with strychnine and had written in some concern to his brother, Michael, saying she had found a certain white powder which her husband habitually took. When Michael obliquely asked his brother about this, James Maybrick expostulated: ‘Whoever told you that? It’s a damned lie!’
Dr Humphreys saw his patient again on 29 and 30 April. He concluded that Maybrick was a chronic dyspeptic and put him on a diet. On the night of 30 April, Florence Maybrick went to a fancy-dress ball with her brother-in-law, Edwin, a bachelor cotton merchant, who was staying in Battlecrease House after a recent visit to America.
James Maybrick was back in his office on Wednesday, 1 May. Said brother Edwin: ‘Mrs Maybrick gave me a parcel to take to his office … It contained a brown jug in which there was some farinaceous food in liquid form [Barry’s Revalenta]. My brother poured the liquid into a saucepan and heated it over the fire, and he then poured it into a basin and partook of it. He remarked: “The cook has put some of that damned sherry in it, and she knows I don’t like it!”’
By Friday, Maybrick was ill again and Dr Humphreys was summoned about 10 am. He later stated: ‘I found Mr Maybrick in the morning-room on the ground floor. He said he had not been so well since the day before, and he added that he did not think my medicine agreed with him. Mrs Maybrick was present and said: “You always say the same thing about anybody’s medicine after two or three days.”’ Dr Humphreys’s advice was ‘to go on the same for two or three weeks’. He went away and was called back at midnight. In the interim Mr Maybrick had gone out and had a Turkish bath. He was now in bed; he had been sick twice and complained of gnawing pains in his legs.
On Saturday, his hands felt numb, and he was constantly sick. The doctor told Maybrick he should ‘abate his thirst by washing out with water or by sucking ice or a damp cloth’. On Sunday, his sore throat and foul tongue troubled him; Valentine’s meat juice was prescribed as well as the prussic acid solution. Mrs Maybrick then thought that a second opinion was unnecessary. She said: ‘He has seen so many [doctors] and they have done him so little good.’ She was in constant attendance on him day and night, sleeping in the dressing-room adjacent to the Maybricks’ bedroom.
At 8.30 am on Monday, 6 May, Dr Humphreys was back. ‘I told [him] to stop the Valentine’s beef juice … I was not surprised at it making Mr Maybrick sick, as it made many people sick.’ Humphreys now prescribed some arsenic, Fowler’s solution, which contained in all 1/25th of a grain, and that evening the patient was fed with Brand’s beef tea, some chicken broth, Neave’s food, and some milk and water. He continued to vomit, and a
blister was applied to his stomach. On Tuesday morning he seemed better and told Dr Humphreys: ‘I am quite a different man today.’ Nonetheless, a second opinion was now sought by Edwin Maybrick. His choice, Dr Carter, arrived about 5 pm. Carter’s conclusion was that the patient was suffering from acute dyspepsia, resulting from ‘indiscretion of food, or drink, or both’. He prescribed a careful diet and small doses of sedatives. Both Carter and Humphreys thought Maybrick would be well in a few days.
But on Wednesday, 8 May, there was a general turn for the worse. Two of the invalid’s friends, Mrs Matilda Briggs and Mrs Martha Hughes (they were sisters), called at the house in the morning and were told by Nanny Yapp about the soaking flypapers and other suspicious matters. Mrs Briggs took immediate action. She told the exhausted wife to send for a trained nurse. She spoke to Edwin. She also telegraphed Michael Maybrick in London – ‘Come at once. Strange things going on here.’
The nurse arrived at 2.15 pm. About three o’clock, Mrs Maybrick came to the garden gate and gave Alice Yapp a letter to post. The young nanny was minding the Maybricks’ three-year-old daughter and walked to the post office with the child. On the way there the letter, according to Alice, was dropped in the dirt, and needed a new envelope. At any rate, she read the letter, failed to post it and handed it over to Edwin about half-past five. The letter was addressed to A. Brierley and had been written in reply to a somewhat frosty missive from him suggesting that he and Florence did not meet again until the autumn. Mrs Maybrick had written:
Dearest – Since my return I have been nursing M day and night – he is sick unto death! … And now all depends upon how his strength will hold out … We are terribly anxious … But relieve your mind of all fear of discovery now and in the future. M has been delirious since Sunday and I know now he is perfectly ignorant of everything … and also that he has not been making any enquiries whatever!
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 6