But the Dr. Stanley theory does provide a motive. Leonard Matters, an Australian journalist who later became a Labour Member of Parliament, relates that when he was the editor of an English newspaper in Buenos Aires, he came across the “confessions” of “Dr. Stanley” (which he states is a fictitious name). Therein the widowed Dr. Stanley, a former Harley Street surgeon who lived in a luxurious house in Portman Square, had a son who died at the beginning of 1888, having contracted a disease, presumably a venereal disease, from a “high class” prostitute whom he named as Marie Jeannette Kelly. Matters gave the date of the meeting between young Stanley and the prostitute as February 1886 and critics of this theory say it falls down because venereal disease would not kill in two years but in the events related it seems more than likely that the young man, with his promising career ruined and feeling he had nothing to live for, committed suicide.
Determined to avenge the death of his only son Dr. Stanley set out to find the woman who was responsible and to kill her. By means of lengthy exploration and careful questioning he was led to the East End of London. But, so runs the story, he knew he had to be careful; he did not want her warned that he was looking for her. He decided that he would carefully pick out the women of the streets most likely to know her whereabouts but he would be careful how and when he questioned them. Only when he was sure they might be able to help him and only when he was sure he was not overheard would he find out what he could; and then he would silence his informant.
Slowly, very slowly, he began to get nearer to Marie Kelly. “Long Liz” Stride said, yes, she knew the woman Kelly, and within an hour he found the woman known to some of her associates as Kate Kelly, a woman who, all too late, Dr. Stanley found was too old and ugly to have been the young and pretty “high class” Kelly described by his son. And so it proved to be. Catherine Eddowes sometimes called herself Kate Kelly, taking the surname of the man she was currently living with; but before he killed her Dr. Stanley learned that she knew a Mary Kelly, a young and good-looking woman who lived with a man named Joe Barnett in Dorset Street, or rather in Miller’s Court off Dorset Street. So Dr. Stanley at last found Marie Jeannette Kelly. For a time he watched her and the room that was her home and when the opportunity was right he went in, ascertained that she was indeed Marie Jeannette Kelly and had known his boy. He told her he had come to avenge the death of his only son: one stifled scream escaped the woman’s lips, “Murder!,” but such cries were common in that district at that time and no one took any notice. Dr. Stanley killed the woman who had ruined his son and he gave vent to all his anger and frustration with an awful exhibition of fiendish work with his surgeon’s knife. After finding and killing Mary Kelly, Dr. Stanley slipped out of Britain and went to live in Buenos Aires.
On his deathbed ten years later he admitted to a friend that he was Jack the Ripper, and Leonard Matters, while admitting that he could “not vouch for its genuineness” conducted no “investigation” himself into the history of the Whitechapel murders and became overwhelmingly convinced that this was “the most plausible” of the many theories he had heard of the motives and the identity of Jack the Ripper. Colin Wilson and other Ripperologists have found holes in the story: Mary Kelly, according to the coroner, was not suffering from anything other than alcoholism, although whether he would have made public the fact that she was suffering from a venereal disease is surely debatable. It is suggested that Dr. Stanley should have had no difficulty in finding Mary Kelly within hours, not weeks; little if any medical skill was shown by the mutilations; research has failed to locate any Harley Street surgeon who ceased to practice in 1888 and who died in Buenos Aires and so on. Yet a Mr. A. L. Lee of Torquay told Colin Wilson in April 1972 that his father had worked in the City of London Mortuary in Golden Lane at the time of the murders and his immediate superior was a man named Dr. Cedric Saunders, the City Coroner, who had a very special friend, a Dr. Stanley, who visited the mortuary about once a week. One day Dr. Stanley had said to Dr. Saunders, “The cows have got my son. I’ll get even with them!” Very soon afterwards the murders began and Dr. Stanley still visited the mortuary but as soon as the murders stopped, he was never seen again. When Mr. Lee senior asked Dr. Saunders whether Dr. Stanley would be coming again the answer was “No…I believe he was Jack the Ripper.” In the early 1920s the present Mr. Lee said he had read in a Sunday newspaper that a Dr. Stanley, “believed to have been Jack the Ripper,” had died in South America. Whatever the truth of this story it has to be a possibility that there really was a “Dr. Stanley.”
Daniel Farson, another Ripperologist, also received a letter from a correspondent which seems to lend some support to the “Dr. Stanley” story. A Mr. Barca of Streatham lived in Buenos Aires for ten years from 1910 to 1920 and while he was there he was told of a bar known as “Sally’s Bar” which was frequented by sailors and people of ill-repute. He was given to understand that it was owned by Jack the Ripper and the Sally after whom the bar was named was a young girl he had brought out to South America with him in 1888. After making enough money to live for the rest of her life without working, Sally had returned to Europe and had finally settled in Paris. Dr. Stanley, as we have seen, is supposed to have died in 1920.
On reflection the Dr. Stanley theory has much to commend it and further research might reveal corroborative evidence but until that day the “Dr. Stanley” theory must be regarded as ingenious and possible but unproven. Most Ripperologists seem to regard the story as fiction pure and simple; I’m not so sure.
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“Jill the Ripper” is an interesting possibility. It is a theory that the redoubtable Inspector Abberline, who should have known as much as anyone about the murders and the murderer, came up with originally, among others. It was after the last murder, that of Mary Kelly, when two women claimed, emphatically, that they had seen Mary Kelly after 8:00 A.M. on the Friday morning when medical evidence seemed to establish that she had been murdered around 3:00 A.M. that Abberline found himself in something of a quandary. One of his sergeants tried to help. “Could they have been mistaken, sir?” Abberline, an experienced officer, felt there was no question of a mistake. Either the women were lying (but why?) or what they said was true. There was too much detail, he felt, for it to be a mistake; they had stuck to their stories in spite of all his endeavours to get them to change them or admit a possible mistake.
Mrs. Caroline Maxwell, wife of a lodging-house keeper, lived at 14 Dorset Street. She had known Mary Kelly for some time, about four months, and although she readily admitted that she had only spoken to the girl about twice she was quite definite that she had seen Mary Kelly on the Friday morning, between eight o’clock and half-past, at the corner of Miller’s Court. “I am quite certain it was her,” she said, and Mary Kelly had spoken to her! Mrs. Maxwell said it was unusual to see her at that time of the day and she had said as much and invited the girl to “come and have a drop of rum.” “But no, she wouldn’t have no rum, or nothing,” continued Mrs. Maxwell. “Said she just had a pint of ale and it made her proper sick. She looked ill, too, poor soul…” Later, when Abberline tried to break her story and catch her out, she said: “Going to call me a liar, are you?…Well, I’m quite sure, see. I’d know Mary Kelly anywhere.” She said that she saw Mary Kelly again, after she had prepared her husband’s breakfast; this time the girl was outside the “Britannia” public house, talking to a man. Told that medical experts said the girl had been dead for five or six hours by that time, Mrs. Maxwell replied: “And how can a doctor tell for sure? You tell me that.” She said “of course” Mary recognised her.
Abberline gave up. After all, Mrs. Caroline Maxwell was not the only thorn in his flesh at that time. A tailor also claimed to have seen Mary Kelly at 8:00 A.M., and yet another witness claimed to have seen the girl, who was quite well-known by sight, at 10:00 A.M.; this would be some seven hours after Mary Kelly had been murdered, according to medical evidence.
It was odd if they were all mistaken, thought Abber
line, there must be an explanation. Could it be that they had seen a woman who looked like Mary Kelly, possibly someone wearing her clothes; and that the woman, when she was spoken to, had pretended to be Mary Kelly? Abberline went to see his friend Dr. Dutton and asked him what he thought of the idea that it was perhaps Jill the Ripper that they should look for. The more they discussed it, the more the idea seemed a possibility. A man would surely be caught in the police nets that were quickly thrown round the scene of a crime and elsewhere—but a woman? Nobody would have suspected a woman—but could a woman have committed the last monstrous murder of Mary Kelly?
The idea was developed and popularised by William Stewart in his book, Jack the Ripper—A New Theory (1939). In his Introduction he claims that his enquiries into the mystery extended over a period of several years; that he had consulted every known writing on the subject; made dozens of plans and detailed drawings; and in fact had examined calendars, tide tables and meteorological data, and just about everything bearing “in the least degree” upon the subject. His researches, he claimed, had unearthed many forgotten but important facts and, with the assistance of friends, he had conducted a series of experiments on the spots where the crimes took place. He added that he was an artist and he felt that his knowledge of anatomy (“second only to that of a surgeon”), his life spent in the study of cause and effect, his powers of observation, and a mind trained to “materialise abstruse problems,” all helped to equip him for unravelling the mystery of Jack the Ripper. He mentioned too that he had made models of the scenes of some of the murders and they formed the basis for his illustrations in the book. He had also made models of the victims and photographs of them were superimposed on the pictures of the scenes of the crimes.
After pointing out the fact that the coroner at the inquest on Mary Kelly remarked on the unwisdom of making public all the facts which came to the notice of the police, William Stewart writes, in italics: “One of these facts was that the remains of the bonnet and piece of charred velvet were from articles which had never been in the possession of the murdered woman, though some of her clothing was missing” and while it was publicly stated that a further search of the ashes failed to supply any “additional” clues, additional to what was never discovered. Stewart then proceeds with the Jill the Ripper theory having prepared his readers by saying he is making an honest attempt to supply a theory which, “unlike all which have been advanced hitherto, is tenable.”
William Stewart asks what sort of person could have committed such murders and who had advantages which made suspicion for such acts remote and he suggested that, although it is too late now, if at the time the murders were being perpetrated four questions had been asked, the identity of Jack the Ripper might have been a comparatively easy matter to determine:
1) What sort of person could be out at night without exciting the suspicion of the household or neighbours who were keyed up with suspicion on account of the mysterious crimes?
2) What sort of person, heavily bloodstained, could pass through the streets without exciting suspicion?
3) What sort of person could have the elementary anatomical knowledge which was evidenced by the mutilations and the skill to perform them in such a way as to make some people think a doctor was responsible?
4) What sort of murderer could have risked being found by the dead body and yet have a complete and perfect alibi?
William Stewart’s answer to all these sane and sensible questions is: a woman who was or had been a midwife. “Not Jack,” he says, “but Jill the Ripper can be the only satisfactory answer to the mystery.”
In case his readers should consider the idea unthinkable he details other instances of “female ferocity” including Mary Ann Cotton, whose cunning was such that she may well have murdered some twenty people before she was suspected; Mrs. Amelia Dyer, the Reading Baby Farmer, who murdered at least seven infants; and Mrs. Mary Pearcey who murdered Mrs. Phoebe Hogg and also Mrs. Hogg’s baby in October, 1890 (almost severing the head from the body). She then wheeled the bodies over one-and-a-half miles through busy streets between five and seven o’clock in the evening. This latter fact makes the Ripper, his crimes, and his escape somewhat less remarkable than one might think at first and leads one to consider whether the Ripper murders, or some of them, may have been committed elsewhere and the bodies conveyed to the places where they were found. This seems likely in several of the murders where the position of the limbs of the body and the condition of the clothing, taking into account the loss of blood, seems difficult to explain otherwise.
Stewart also makes the interesting point that men, when they commit murder, are usually content to kill but a woman is disposed to inflict some further injury on her victim. Moreover, no violence, in the sense that masculine energy had been used, was apparent in the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. “Mutilation,” he says “is the supreme expression of spitefulness and spitefulness is a vice to which female criminals are addicts.”
William Stewart contends that it is even possible that Mrs. Pearcey was the Ripper, murdering the victims in her room in Priory Street, Camden Town; and this would explain the silence which seemed to surround the killings and even the fact that the bodies were sometimes discovered in comparatively well-frequented places. Stewart adds that she may have confessed her crimes to someone who could not be prosecuted for being an accessory after the fact and this could explain the mysterious message which she inserted in a Continental newspaper the day before her execution, a message that stated: “I have not divulged.” Certainly this cryptic message has never been explained. Her defending lawyer, Hutton, said Mrs. Pearcey (who may have once been a midwife) was the most cold-blooded and remarkable murderess he had ever defended and Sir Melville Macnaghten said he had rarely seen a woman of stronger physique and whose nerves were as iron cast as her body.
William Stewart goes to great pains to argue his theory that a midwife or former midwife was the murderer. The knowledge displayed in the performance of the mutilations would be knowledge possessed by a midwife; equally the fact that the mutilations were almost certainly performed by a hand unpractised in surgery but they showed a knowledge and manipulative dexterity that would be possessed by a midwife. Such a person would be a well-known sight; she would have a respectable reputation; she would in all probability have known and be known to her victims and had she been discovered actually bending over the body of one of her victims she had only to say she was passing when she came upon the body and at first thought the dead woman required her professional attention. Her presence anywhere and at any time would not attract undue attention and nor would her clothes if they were bloodstained. Stewart ingeniously points out that at that period a woman’s dress, with its voluminous skirts and cloak, could very easily and quickly have been turned inside out and excited no one’s interest.
William Stewart argues that his murderess would probably have been content to slash all her victims as she had done to Nichols but when she read newspaper reports of the murder and found that a medical man was thought to be responsible, she decided to mutilate her next victim in a way that suggested the murderer was indeed a doctor. Once this idea had received wide publicity, the possibility of finding the real murderer was considerably lessened, for everyone was looking for a man. Stewart also argues that the neat arrangement of articles from the victim’s pocket is a typically feminine impulsive action. He suggests that the final Ripper murder, that of Mary Kelly, made it virtually certain that the perpetrator of the crimes was a woman and a midwife.
Kelly was three months pregnant and this fact does seem to have alerted the authorities to the possibility of “a new line of enquiry” as it was officially put. The murdering midwife, says Stewart, realising that such enquiries might lead to her, fled and took on a new identity elsewhere. Still with the Kelly murder, Stewart suggests that the fierce fire was caused by the murderer burning her own heavily bloodstained clothes; she then dressed in Kelly’s clothes and left. This is the explanati
on for some witnesses thinking they saw Mary Kelly after she was dead; in fact they saw the murderess dressed in Kelly’s clothes.
Colin Wilson is among others who have pointed out that Mary Kelly is almost certain to have had no spare clothes (she was desperate for money for the rent and would have sold or pawned anything she could spare) and the murdered woman’s clothes lay in a neat pile in the bedroom where the body was found. What could have happened is that the Ripper, having cut Mary’s throat, stripped himself naked before inflicting the awful mutilations on Mary’s body during the course of which he, or she, could hardly have escaped being heavily bloodstained. Then, having burnt the three-month-old foetus (a fierce fire would have been required to achieve this object and some clothing, bedclothing or even furniture may well have been burnt to build up such a fire), he or she dressed in his or her own clothes and left the scene. It is possible that the murderer brought some clothes for Mary Kelly and after the murder burnt them for fear that he or she might be traced through the sale of the clothes.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 14