Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect

by Robert House

  14. Report of Chief Inspector Donald S. Swanson, October 19, 1888, to Home Office.

  15. Vienna Correspondent, “The Whitechapel Murders,” Times (London), October 2, 1888.

  16. Letter from Dr. Hermann Adler, “The Murder Near Cracow. To the Editor of the Times,” Times (London), October 3, 1888.

  17. Letter from Moses Gaster, “The Murder Near Cracow. To the Editor of the Times,” Times (London), October 3, 1888.

  18. Letter from A Butcher, “Is the Whitechapel Murderer a Jew? Important Letter,” Evening News, October 9, 1888.

  19. Ibid.

  20. “The City Murder,” Jewish Chronicle, October 12, 1888.

  21. Testimony of Joseph Lawende, Daily Telegraph, October 12, 1888.

  22. “The Murders,” Evening News, October 9, 1888.

  23. “Apprehensions Sought. Murder. Metropolitan Police District,” Police Gazette, October 19, 1888.

  24. “The Handwriting on the Wall,” Pall Mall Gazette, October 12, 1888.

  25. “The Writing on the Wall,” Evening News, October 12, 1888.

  26. “Dangerous Errors,” Star, October 12, 1888.

  27. “Notes of the Week,” Jewish Chronicle, October 12, 1888.

  28. Letter from Dr. Hermann Adler to Commissioner Warren, October 13, 1888.

  29. “The East End Murders,” Evening News, October 15, 1888.

  13. The Batty Street “Lodger”

  1. “East End Tragedies,” Echo, October 15, 1888.

  2. Ibid.

  3. “The Murders,” Evening News, October 16, 1888.

  4. “East-End Atrocities,” Echo, October 17, 1888.

  5. “Ludwig Released,” Star, October 2, 1888.

  6. “Ludwig Flourishes a Knife,” Star, October 17, 1888.

  7. “The Batty Street Clue,” Echo, October 17, 1888.

  8. “The East End Murders. A House to House Search,” Daily News, October 18, 1888.

  9. “A Letter from 22, Batty Street,” Evening News, October 18, 1888.

  10. “Interview with the Landlady in Berner Street,” Evening News, October 18, 1888.

  11. Home Office memo to Henry Matthews, September 19, 1888, HO 144/221/A49301E/4.

  12. “East End Atrocities,” Echo, October 20, 1888.

  13. Ibid.

  14. “East End Atrocities. Police Active—Still No Clue,” Echo, October 29, 1888.

  15. Donald Swanson, marginalia in his personal copy of Robert Anderson’s book The Lighter Side of My Official Life, property of Nevill Swanson, on permanent loan to New Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum.

  16. Sir Robert Anderson, “The Lighter Side of My Official Life,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh, March 1910.

  17. Report of Donald S. Swanson, October 19, 1888, cited in Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2000), 125.

  18. Report of Robert Anderson to Home Office, October 23, 1888, cited in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion, 133–134.

  19. Chief Inspector Donald S. Swanson report to Home Office, October 19, 1888.

  20. The “From Hell” letter disappeared from the Metropolitan Police Archives, and its present whereabouts are unknown. A facsimile is online at www.casebook.org/images/lusk_big.jpg.

  21. “The Whitechapel Tragedies,” Sunday Times, October 21, 1888.

  22. Report of James McWilliam, October 27, 1888.

  23. John Douglas, Ann Burgess, Allen Burgess, and Robert Ressler, eds., Crime Classification Manual (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 464.

  14. Mary Kelly

  1. “Royalty in the East End,” Daily Telegraph, November 1, 1888.

  2. “A Marylebone Tragedy,” Star, November 2, 1888.

  3. “News of All Sorts,” Star, November 5, 1888.

  4. “The Fifth of November,” Daily News, November 6, 1888.

  5. “The Guy of the Unemployed,” Star, November 6, 1888.

  6. “He was Only Guying,” Evening News, November 6, 1888.

  7. “Lord Mayor’s Day,” Times (London), November 7, 1888.

  8. “Whitechapel: Important Evidence at the Inquest To-day,” Star, November 12, 1888.

  9. Ibid.

  10. “Dorset-Street Murder. Inquest and Verdict,” Daily Telegraph, November 13, 1888.

  11. Neal Shelden, The Victims of Jack the Ripper (Knoxville: Inklings Press, 2007), 43.

  12. “Dorset Street Murder. Inquest and Verdict,” Daily Telegraph, November 13, 1888.

  13. “A Timeline of Events in the Life and Death of Mary Jane Kelly,” Casebook Productions, www.casebook.org/timeline.kelly.html.

  14. “The East End Tragedies: A Seventh Murder,” Daily Telegraph, November 10, 1888.

  15. The exact nature of the partition is unclear. This is discussed extensively on the casebook.org forums thread “Room 13 Miller’s Court.”

  16. “The Inquest,” testimony of Joseph Barnett, Morning Advertiser, November 13, 1888.

  17. Letter from Mahatma Gandhi to his brother Laxmidas, November 9, 1888, posted on casebook.org message board, www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4920/22806.html.

  18. “The Murder of Mary Kelly in Whitechapel,” Penny Illustrated Paper, November 17, 1888. There is still some confusion over whether the woman in Kelly’s room that night was Lizzie Albrook or Maria Harvey, because statements that Harvey gave to the police and the press are somewhat contradictory on this point.

  19. “Dorset Street Murder. Inquest and Verdict,” Daily Telegraph, November 13, 1888, and “The Whitechapel Murder: The Inquest,” Morning Advertiser, November 13, 1888.

  20. “The Inquest,” Morning Advertiser, November 13, 1888.

  21. Ibid. There is some debate as to the exact location of Elizabeth Prater’s room, because some reports state that Prater’s room was directly above Kelly’s, whereas others say that she lived at the front of the house.

  22. Statement of George Hutchinson, November 12, 1888, ref. MEPO 3/140, ff. 227–229, in Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2000), 376–377.

  23. A similar story was reported in “Another Whitechapel Murder,” Times (London), November 10, 1888.

  24. “Dorset Street Murder. Inquest and Verdict,” Daily Telegraph, November 13, 1888; “The Spitalfields Murder,” Daily News, November 13, 1888; and “The Whitechapel Murder: The Inquest,” Morning Advertiser, November 13, 1888.

  25. “Dorset Street Murder. Inquest and Verdict,” Daily Telegraph, November 13, 1888; and “The Whitechapel Murder: The Inquest,” Morning Advertiser, November 13, 1888.

  26. Sarah Lewis’s inquest testimony as reported in the Daily Telegraph, the Daily News, and the Morning Advertiser, November 13, 1888.

  27. Elwyn Jones and John Lloyd, The Ripper File (London: Arthur Baker, 1975), www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4926/19145.html.

  28. “The Latest Horror,” Evening News, November 12, 1888.

  29. Dew’s recollection of events has come under harsh skepticism by Ripperologists. The above was his recollection of events as printed in his memoir, I Caught Crippen: Memoirs of Ex-Chief Inspector Walter Dew, C.I.D., of Scotland Yard (London: Blackie and Son, 1938), 86, 143–155.

  30. “The Whitechapel Murder: The Inquest,” Morning Advertiser, November 13, 1888.

  31. “Dorset Street Murder. Inquest and Verdict,” Daily Telegraph, November 13, 1888.

  32. Walter Dew, I Caught Crippen: Memoirs of Ex-Chief Inspector Walter Dew, C.I.D., of Scotland Yard (London: Blackie and Son, 1938), 86, 143–155.

  33. “The East End Tragedies,” Daily Telegraph, November 10, 1888.

  34. Ibid.

  35. “The Whitechapel Murder: The Inquest,” Morning Advertiser, November 13, 1888.

  36. Ibid.

  37. “The Whitechapel Murder,” Barking and East Ham Advertiser, Saturday, November 24, 1888.

  38. “The Whitechapel Tragedies. A Night Spent with Inspector Mo
ore,” Pall Mall Gazette, November 4, 1889.

  39. Statement of George Hutchinson, November 12, 1888, ref. MEPO 3/140, ff. 227–229, in Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2000), 376–377.

  15. The Curtain Falls

  1. “The Whitechapel Murder,” Times (London), November 12, 1888.

  2. Jewish Chronicle, November 16, 1888.

  3. “The Poplar Murder,” Daily Chronicle, December 29, 1888.

  4. Report of Monro to the Home Office, December 23, 1888.

  5. Report of Robert Anderson, January 11, 1889, cited in Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2000), 434.

  6. “Is He a Thug?” Star, December 24, 1888.

  7. Report of James Monro, January 26, 1889, cited in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion, 440–441.

  8. Report of James Monro, March 15, 1889, cited in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion, 444.

  9. Statement by Inspector Henry Moore, July17, 1889, MEPO 3/140 ff. 294–297, and inquest testimony Elizabeth Ryder, Times (London), July 18, 1889, and of Margaret Franklin, Times (London), July 19, 1889.

  10. “The Whitechapel Murder,” Times (London), July 19, 1889, and HO 3/140, f. 275.

  11. Statement of E. Badham, July 17, 1889, cited in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion, 448.

  12. Report of Dr. Phillips, July 22, 1889, ref. MEPO 3/140, ff. 263–271.

  13. Report of Dr. George Phillips, July 22, 1889, cited in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion, 455–460.

  14. Report of Dr. Bond, ref. MEPO 3/140, ff. 259–262.

  15. Ref. HO144 221/A49301I, ff. 5–6.

  16. “Does He Know the Ripper?” New York Herald (London edition), September 11, 1889.

  17. “Does This Man Know the Ripper?” New York Herald (London edition), September 11, 1889.

  18. Report of Commissioner Monro, September 11, 1889.

  19. Report cover from CID Central Office, ref. MEPO 3/140, f. 175.

  16. An Encore? The Murder of Frances Coles

  1. Report of Superintendent Arnold, February 13, 1891, ref. MEPO 3/140, ff. 112–114.

  2. Statement of P.S. John Don, ref. MEPO 3/140, ff. 117–118.

  3. Statement of James Thomas Sadler, February 14, 1891, taken by Donald S. Swanson, ref. MEPO 3/140, ff. 97–108.

  4. “The Whitechapel Murder,” Times (London), February 24 and 28, 1891.

  5. Statement of Thomas Fowles, taken by Sergeant James Nearn, reference MEPO 3/140, ff. 83–85.

  6. Report of Donald Swanson, December 11, 1891, ref. MEPO 3/140, ff. 89–90.

  17. Downward Spiral

  1. John K. Walton, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen: The Conflict of Rabies in Late Victorian London,” Journal of Social History 13 (1979): 219–239.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Charles Dickens, Dickens’s Dictionary of London (London: Charles Dickens, 1879), 48.

  4. Leslie C. Staples, ed., The Uncommercial Traveller and Reprinted Pieces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 495.

  5. “Fined for Unmuzzled Dogs,” Lloyd’s Weekly News, December 15, 1889.

  6. “The Rabies Order,” City Press, December 18, 1889.

  7. Commissioner James Monro, interview, Cassel’s Saturday Journal, c. June 1890.

  8. Sir Robert Anderson, “Sir Robert Anderson and Mr. Balfour: To the Editor of the Times,” Times (London), April 30, 1910.

  9. E. M. Leonard, The Early History of the English Poor Law, 1900, cited at Peter Higginbotham, Workhouse Web site, http://users.ox.ac.uk/~peter/workhouse/Abingdon/Abingdon.shtml?=.

  10. Peter Higginbotham, Workhouse Web site, www.workhouses.org.uk.

  11. Anonymous (“One of Them”), Indoor Paupers (London: Chatto and Windus, 1885), www.workhouses.org.uk/index.html?IndoorPaupers/IndoorPaupers.shtml.

  12. Admissions and Discharge Book, Mile End Old Town Workhouse, StBG/ME/114/4; microfilm X111/145 and Mile End Old Town creed registers, StBG/ME/116/5; microfilm X111/166.

  13. Admissions and Discharge Book, Mile End Old Town Workhouse, StBG/ME/114/4; microfilm X111/145 and Mile End Old Town creed register, StBG/ME/116/5; microfilm X111/166.

  14. Orders for reception of lunatics into asylums, 1889–1891, LMA StBG/ME/107/8, no. 1558.

  15. “Police Intelligence,” Daily Telegraph, October 18, 1888.

  16. Phil Fennell, Treatment without Consent: Law, Psychiatry and the Treatment of Mentally Disordered People since 1845 (New York: Routledge, 1996), 2.

  17. J. B. Sharpe, “Report, together with the Minutes of Evidence, and an Appendix of Papers, from the Committee appointed to consider of Provision being made for the Better Regulation of Madhouses in England” (London: Baldwin, 1815), in British Review and London Critical Journal, vol. 6 (London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1815), 533.

  18. Andrew Scull, Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700–1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 61n.

  19. John Thurnam, Observations and Essays on the Statistics of Insanity (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1845), 123.

  20. Charles Augustus Tulk, “The Sixty-Eighth Report of the Visiting Justices Appointed to Superintend the Management of the County Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell,” October 26, 1843, 3.

  21. William Ireland, The Mental Affections of Children: Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1898), 392.

  22. E-mail correspondence with the author David Wright, April 2009.

  23. Peter Higginbotham, “The Metropolitan Asylums Board,” www.workhouses.org.uk.

  24. Private correspondence with David Wright, April 2009.

  25. Gwendoline M. Ayers, England’s First State Hospitals and the Metropolitan Asylums Board, 1867–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 42.

  26. Nick Connell, “Did Kosminsky Try to Return to Colney Hatch?” Ripperana, no. 16, April 1996.

  27. Report of local government inspector and observation of medical superintendent, 1898, GLRO MAB 2403.

  28. November 1899, GLRO MAB 368, vol. 18.

  29. Nick Connell, “The Leavesden Escapee,” Ripperana, no, 17, July 1996.

  30. Fennell, Treatment without Consent, 41.

  31. John Diarmid, cited in Fennell, Treatment without Consent, 37.

  32. D. R. Brower, “Hyoscyamine in the Treatment of Insanity,” American Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry (New York: B. Westermann, 1883).

  33. Fennell, Treatment without Consent, 44; and D. Pierce, “Unsound in Body, Mind, and Institution: Against Interpretation of Insanity and Asylums,” http://home.eol.ca/~glaurung/essays/insanity.htm.

  34. John Crammer, Asylum History: Buckinghamshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum—St. John’s (London: RCPsych Publications, 1990), 133.

  35. Colney Hatch, Register of Admissions Males, no 3. H12/CH/B2/2, and Male Patients Day Book, New Series, no. 20, Middlesex Asylum, Colney Hatch. Also, 1891 Census, Colney Hatch, RG 12/1058, f. 102.

  36. Colney Hatch Case Book Male Side, New Series, no. 20, H12/CH/B13/39.

  37. Colney Hatch Mental Hospital, Deaths and Discharges, M and F, H12/CH/B6/5, 1891–1896; Hamlet of Mile End Old Town, Leavesden Asylum ADMISSION ORDER No. 737, StBG/ME/112/4 no. 441.

  38. 1901 Census (March 31, 1901), RG 13/1322, f. 154.

  39. Leavesden Asylum Male Patients Case Register 12A.

  40. H26/LEA/B/02/031 Modern Folder Labeled “Leavesden Hospital Deaths and Discharges March 1919.”

  18. Anderson’s Suspect

  1. Robert Anderson, The Lighter Side of My Official Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910), 138.

  2. “The ‘Jack the Ripper’ Theory: Reply by Sir Robert Anderson. To the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle,” Globe, March 7, 1910.

  3. If the reader is interested, the issue is discussed extensively in Philip Sugden’s The Complete Histor
y of Jack the Ripper (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2002) and in Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow’s Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates (Stroud: Sutton, 2006), although I do not agree with the authors’ conclusions on the matter.

  4. “Representative Men at Home: Dr. Anderson at New Scotland Yard,” Cassell’s Saturday Journal, June 11, 1892, 895–897.

  5. “Dr. Anderson on Criminal ‘Show Places,’ ” Pall Mall Gazette, November 4, 1889.

  6. “Representative Men at Home: Dr. Anderson at New Scotland Yard,” Cassell’s Saturday Journal, June 11, 1892, 895–897.

  7. “The Detective in Real Life,” Windsor 1 (January to June 1895): 507.

  8. Arthur Griffiths, Mysteries of Police and Crime: A General Survey of Wrongdoing and Its Pursuit, vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1899), 28.

  9. “Punishing Crime,” Nineteenth Century, February 1901.

  10. Robert Anderson, Criminals and Crime: Some Facts and Suggestions (London: J. Nisbet, 1907), 81.

  11. Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu, The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 444.

  12. Robert Anderson, preface, in Hargrave Lee Adam, The Police Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (London: Waverly, 1920), www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.adam1.html.

  13. “Scotland Yard and Its Secrets,” People (London), June 9, 1912.

  14. Hargrave Lee Adam, C.I.D.: Behind the Scenes at Scotland Yard (London: S. Low, Marston, 1931), 12.

  15. “The Ripper Crimes,” Daily Chronicle, September 1, 1908.

  16. Anderson, The Lighter Side of My Official Life.

  17. Robert Anderson, “Criminals and Crime—a Rejoinder,” in The Nineteenth Century and After, vols. 19–20 (London: Spottiswoode, 1908), 200n.

  18. Anderson, “The Lighter Side of My Official Life (Part VI), Blackwood’s Edinburgh, March 1910.

  19. “The House of Commons,” Times (London), April, 22, 1910.

  20. Great Britain. Parliament, House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates: Official Report, vol. 16 (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1910), mxc.

  21. Statement of Monro, read in Commons Sitting by Winston Churchill, December 21, 1910, HC Deb, April 21, 1910, vol. 16, cc2322–2324.