The Complete Jack the Ripper

by Donald Rumbelow

  Another was that women should wear velvet-covered steel collars and, something far nastier, a soft-covered collar with

  fine, sharp pointed stings (thorns), that the infernal assassin will be thus hardly wounded … At the same moment the officer will turn round and take hold of the murderer above the hand, turning it with all the power of his two hands against the breast of the scoundrel; thus, that this monster must bore his own knife into his own breast or must let fall it … and don’t give this Idea to any one except the Chief of Police (as your Lordship would warn unconscious that way the blood-hound). For – who can say, that this criminal don’t belong to a rich family. The officer or officers should look at every suspicious woman or all women in general … The D — may know what is often in such a petticoat!!!!

  This was as about as sensible as the suggestion that suspicious-looking couples should have corrosive matter discharged onto their clothes by means of glass syringes, so that there would be a distinctive mark by which to identify them. When the next victim was found her killer could be then traced both through the description of him that the police would already have, and by matching up the stains on his clothes.

  The three hundred to five hundred detectives that would be needed for this manhunt could be recruited, one writer felt sure, from the young Emperor of Germany who was known to be very fond of his royal grandmother Queen Victoria and who would willingly loan her a thousand detectives from Berlin. The Emperor of Russia and the French President would, he felt sure, be equally agreeable to loaning her a similar number of men.

  Another writer warned that the policemen must be constantly on their guard as he felt sure the Ripper was stupefying his victims with a chloroform-soaked handkerchief before killing them; therefore, as an urgent precaution, they were to arrest anyone who came near them and tried to blow his nose. As a final precaution, all detectives were to act drunk, and wear iron collars and body armour.

  Of course, there was always the possibility that the killer’s vanity might lead to his downfall. Why could he not be traced through the newsagents and newsboys when he bought the newspaper accounts on the mornings after his murders? This was assuming that it was only at such times that he bought newspapers. No doubt the newsagents could identify such a monster. Every one of them should keep a list of clients and against the ones that they most suspected they should scribble the word ‘horrible’.

  With so much activity in Whitechapel it was clear that the police were going to be stumbling over each other every few yards. This led to a suggestion that Whitechapel should be cleared of policemen, except for one hundred pairs of detectives and the prostitutes they could hire for two shillings a night as decoys. Otherwise, too much activity was only going to frighten the Ripper away. Alternatively, since he took such an interest in the efforts that were being made to catch him, why not call a public meeting in a hotel to discuss these ways, and as he was bound to attend, lock him in once the meeting had started.

  One anonymous correspondent, far ahead of his time, did appreciate something about the correspondence that police and public didn’t. He wrote to the City police that having read that a postcard sent to the Central News Agency had the impression of a thumb he suggested that as ‘no two person’s thumbs are alike, the impression of one suspected person’s thumb should be taken and microscopically examined tested’. His letter was read and dutifully filed away with the rest. It would be another seventeen years before the first fingerprint conviction.

  The final suggestion was perhaps the best of all. The following advertisement was to be inserted in the newspapers to trap the medical man that the Ripper was thought to be:

  Medical Man or Assistant Wanted in London, aged between 25 and 40. Must not object to assist in occasional post mortem. Liberal terms. Address stating antecedents. PTR [Please to reply]

  NAME STREET

  If only he had!

  Few of the letters signed ‘Jack the Ripper’, or purporting to come from him, are of any real value – in fact, a ruthless weeding-out process leaves just one. Of interest, however, is the first letter to use the name. It was posted on 28 September 1888, and had a London East Central postmark. It read:

  25 Sept. 1888

  Dear Boss,

  I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha ha. The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife is nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.

  Yours truly

  JACK THE RIPPER

  Don’t mind me giving the trade name.

  Wasn’t good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it.

  No luck yet they say I am a doctor now ha ha.

  As it was posted two days before the ‘double event’ of the Stride and Eddowes murders on 30 September, he was clearly referring to the Hanbury Street murder (Annie Chapman on 8 September) when he says ‘Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal.’ Did he mean that he took her by surprise or – recalling the witness who remembered hearing a woman call out ‘No!’ and then heard something fall against the fence – did he mean that he killed her before she could call out again? Unfortunately the wording is too ambiguous to decide one way or another. However, the threat to ‘clip the lady’s ears off’ meant that the letter had to be taken seriously, as the killer tried to do precisely that with both Eddowes and Stride. The ugly slash that can still be seen on the post-mortem photographs of Eddowes is where he drew his knife across her face with the apparent intention of cutting off her right ear as well as her nose. Yet, if this letter was genuine, and he really wanted to send the ears to the police as he had threatened, why didn’t he? It could hardly have been for lack of time, since he had enough to disembowel the unfortunate woman – it would have required but a second’s further work to cut off an ear.

  A second communication was posted on 1 October, the day after the ‘double event’. This time it was a postcard and, like the first, was sent to the Central News Agency. It read:

  I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. You’ll hear about Saucy Jack’s work tomorrow. Double event this time. Number one squealed a bit. Couldn’t finish straight off. Had not time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.

  JACK THE RIPPER

  Some details of the ‘double event’ had been published in the Sunday newspapers of 30 September. The text of the ‘Dear Boss’ letter was published in a Monday newspaper next day and so the ‘Saucy Jack’ postcard might have been an imitative hoax. The actual postmark – ‘OC 1’ – suggests that it was posted when the details were public. The police tried to trace the writer, by publishing a facsimile poster of both items. This was circulated within three days of the ‘double event’ and asked for anyone who recognized the handwriting to communicate with the nearest police station.

  The most apparently genuine letter of all was not received until 16 October. It was sent to George Lusk, who was head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, and was enclosed within a small parcel containing part of a kidney. Lusk was a builder who specialized in the redecoration and reguilding of music hall interiors. He was a freemason, the local churchwarden, and lived at 1 Alderney Road, Mile End. The letter was addressed ‘From Hell’ and read:

  Mr. Lusk

  Sir I send you half the Kid
ne I took from one woman prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer

  signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

  Interestingly, it was not signed ‘Jack the Ripper’, almost as if the murderer, if it was him, was repudiating his public christening. The phrase ‘Catch me when you can’, which appeared in this and several other letters, was discovered by art historian Anna Gruetzner Robins to be the title of a popular piece of music written by Imanuel Liebich in 1866.

  When Eddowes’ body had been examined by the police surgeon, one of the kidneys was indeed found to be missing. This letter and the kidney were sent on to Major Smith of the City Police who asked the police surgeon to consult with the most eminent specialists in the medical profession about it and get a report to him without delay. Unfortunately, as he later wrote,

  some clerk or assistant in the office was got at, and the whole affair was public property next morning. Right royally did the Solons of the metropolis enjoy themselves at the expense of my humble self and the City Police Force. ‘The kidney was the kidney of a dog, anyone could see that’, wrote one. ‘Evidently from the dissecting room’, wrote another. ‘Taken out of a corpse after a post-mortem’, wrote a third. ‘A transparent hoax’, wrote a fourth.

  The kidney was examined by Dr Openshaw, the Pathological Curator of the London Hospital Museum. He said that it was a ‘ginny’ kidney of the sort found in an alcoholic, that it belonged to a woman of about forty-five, and that it had been removed within the last three weeks. The kidney was in an advanced state of Bright’s disease, and the one that had been left in Eddowes’ body was in an exactly similar state. As final proof that it did indeed come from the same body, Smith added that of the renal artery (which is about three inches long) two inches remained in the body and one inch was still attached to the kidney. Mr Sutton, one of the senior surgeons at the London Hospital, who examined the kidney with Dr Openshaw, said that he would pledge his reputation that it had been put in spirits within a few hours of removal.

  Dr Frederick Gordon Brown, the City police surgeon, also examined the kidney. His most important assertion was that no portion of the renal artery adhered to the Lusk kidney because the organ had been ‘trimmed up’. This contradicts Smith and would seem to put his case out of court for the kidney coming from Eddowes, except that there is backing for this and another of his statements that Eddowes’ right kidney did indicate Bright’s disease, which had been denied by Dr Sedgwick Saunders, the City’s Public Analyst, who thought the Lusk kidney a student hoax. Opinion is divided now, as it was then, over the Lusk kidney. If genuine, as many believe it is, then the unsigned letter ‘From Hell’ that accompanied it came from the murderer. It would be the only letter that we could say, with any certainty, came from Jack the Ripper.

  After the Eddowes inquest a jeering letter, postmarked 29 October, was sent to Dr Openshaw of the London Hospital. This he handed to Major Smith. It said:

  Old boss you was rite it was the left kidney i was goin to hoperate agin close to your ospitle just as i was going to dror mi nife along of er bloomin throte them cusses of coppers spoilt the game but i guess i wil be on the job soon and wil send you another bit of innerds

  Jack the ripper

  O have you seen the devle with his mikerscope and scalpul a-looking at a kidney with a slide cocked up.

  How authentic were these letters? Of which of them could it be said that the writer was definitely ‘Jack the Ripper’? Sir Robert Anderson, in his book The Lighter Side of My Official Life, threw considerable doubts on the first two by saying: ‘So I will only add here that the “Jack the Ripper” letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising journalist.’ And Sir Melville Macnaghten, who was to become head of the CID in 1903, confirmed that this was so by commenting in his own memoirs: ‘In this ghastly production I have always thought I could discern the stained forefinger of the journalist – indeed, a year later I had shrewd suspicions as to the actual author! But whoever did pen the gruesome stuff, it is certain to my mind that it was not the mad miscreant who had committed the murders.’

  The mystery appears to have been solved by Stewart Evans’s discovery in 1993 of a letter from Chief Inspector John George Littlechild, head of the Secret Department (Special Branch) at Scotland Yard, asserting that Tom Bulling, who forwarded the Jack the Ripper letters from the Central News Agency to the police, was the originator and Charles Moore, his boss, was the inventor of the original letter. Another journalist called Best subsequently claimed that he and a provincial colleague were responsible for all the ‘Ripper’ letters. Allowing for the exaggeration, he and his colleague may have written some but certainly not all of them. Their understandable motive was to keep the story in print, ‘to keep the business alive’.

  Assuming this identification of Bulling and Moore as the originators to be correct, why was the name of ‘Jack the Ripper’ chosen? There is a possible explanation in the events of some fifty years before when in 1837–8 London was being terrorized by a strange bat-like creature called Spring Heeled Jack. He had fiery eyes, according to witnesses from his mouth would shoot blue and white flames, and with claw-like hands he would tear at his victim’s clothes before escaping with huge spring-like bounds and screams of maniacal laughter. After a two-year reign of terror he disappeared, just as mysteriously as he had come, but ‘Spring Heeled Jack, the Terror of London’ quickly gained popular notoriety in the penny dreadfuls and stage melodramas of the day. The fictions about him continued to be published well into the next century. Possibly it was capitalizing on this well-known notoriety that the name of Jack was chosen. It was a name already familiar to the public and had connotations of terror. ‘Ripper’ is more obviously explainable but possibly, and I only throw this out as a suggestion, someone was recalling the notorious Hannibal Chollop in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit who, besides carrying a brace of seven-barrel revolving pistols in his pockets, also carried a swordstick which he called his ‘Tickler’ and ‘a great knife, which (for he was a man of pleasant turn of humour) he called “Ripper”, in allusion to its usefulness as a means of ventilating the stomach of any adversary in a close contest.’

  This being so, it does suggest that both the letter and the postcard were hoaxes. Until now, it has generally been assumed that the early reference to the ‘double event’ before the newspapers carried the story was proof positive that it must have come from the Ripper. If, as both Anderson and Macnaghten say, they had strong suspicions as to the identity of the author and that he was a journalist (and one probably working on the case for Anderson, at least, to have known him), then the case for their being genuine falls down. Certainly it would explain how the writer knew in advance of the ‘double event’.

  Donald McCormick disputes this and offers the evidence of Dr Thomas Dutton who, prior to the murders, had specialized in micro-photography and who was a prominent figure in the Chichester and West Sussex Microscopic Society. Apparently he had made a hundred and twenty-eight micro-photographs of the Jack the Ripper correspondence and of these at least thirty-four were in the same handwriting.

  The writing was disguised to appear to be that of an uneducated man on some occasions; on others it was that of a painstaking clerk. The same with the phraseology. But even that was marked by ‘lapses’ into literacy, especially in Jack’s effective essays into verse. To quote one example:

  Eight little whores, with no hope of heaven,

  Gladstone may save one, then there’ll be seven.

  Seven little whores begging for a shilling,

  One stays in Henage Court, then there’s a killing.

  Six little whores, glad to be alive,

  One sidles up to Jack, then there are five.

  Four and whore rhyme aright,

  So do three and me,

  I’ll set the town alight

  Ere there are two

 
Two little whores, shivering with fright,

  Seek a cosy doorway in the middle of the night.

  Jack’s knife flashes, then there’s but one,

  And the last one’s the ripest for Jack’s idea of fun.

  It may not be verse in the accepted sense, but this is certainly not the composition of an illiterate. Jack would sometimes mis-spell words deliberately, then forget later on and write a word correctly. It was the same with his punctuation. He wrote ‘Jewes’ with and extra ‘e’ when he scrawled his message in chalk on the wall, and which the police so stupidly washed off. But he also spelt the word correctly in some letters.

  I was asked by the police to photograph the message on the wall before it was washed off, but Sir Charles Warren was so insistent that the message must not be preserved in any form that he ordered the police to destroy the prints I sent them.

  This I find frankly incredible. Even if true, why did Dr Dutton never keep copies and what, in fact, did he do with the originals? Did they ever exist? As he had apparently full police co-operation with the other hundred and twenty-eight micro-photographs, why should they jib at this particular message when, according to Dutton, he ‘definitely established that the writing was the same as that in some of the letters’? His micro-photograph would have settled once and for all the doubts that still exist about precisely what was written on that wall. Even the police constable who found it in Goulston Street reported it wrongly when he was giving evidence at the inquest. He said the message was ‘The Jews are The men That Will not be Blamed for nothing’, and it was only after persistent cross-examination that he revealed that ‘Jews’ should have read ‘Juwes’. The correct wording was ‘The Juwes are not The men that Will be Blamed for nothing’. According to a BBC television presentation of the case in 1973, this spelling of Jews has a masonic connotation. The biblical Solomon ordered the three Jews who had murdered the Grand Mason Hiram Abiff to be killed with ‘due ceremony and formal ritual’. The wording is, ‘ … for the murder of J-U-W-E-S … Let the breast be torn open and the heart and vitals be taken from thence and thrown over the shoulder.’ This recalls the following cross-examination at the Eddowes inquest: