Crimes of Jack the Ripper

by Paul Roland

  Fingerprint evidence

  At the time of the Whitechapel murders forensic science was still in its infancy. The radical new theory suggesting that criminals could be identified by their unique individual fingerprints was beginning to be acknowledged grudgingly but had still to be proven in a British court of law. As early as 1879 Scottish physician Henry Foulds had used fingerprint evidence to catch a criminal and had drawn the authorities’ attention to its potential in an article published in a national magazine. The article sparked a heated public debate as to who was the true discoverer of fingerprinting, Foulds or his rival William Herschel, so the British police had no excuse for claiming that they were unaware of its value. But no one in authority appears to have even considered testing the technique on the ‘Dear Boss’ letters, for example, or the personal items found at the feet of Annie Chapman.

  Although the first forensic laboratory was not established until 1910 it would not have been unrealistic for the London police of the 1880s to have retained hairs from the victim’s clothes for comparison with samples taken from each suspect and to have preserved these for future reference whenever a new suspect was brought in for questioning. A single bloody hair had been sufficient to convict a French duke of murdering his wife in 1847, but it took the British authorities another 50 years to appreciate the value of trace evidence.

  Even photography, with which Mathew Brady had recorded the carnage on the battlefields of the American Civil War 25 years before the Ripper killings, was a novelty in British crime detection. No photographs were taken of any of the murder sites with the exception of the last, Miller’s Court, and the only body to be photographed in situ was again the last, that of Mary Kelly. The other victims were all photographed after they had been laid out in the mortuary, at which point the prints were of little use other than for identification. Had the Goulston Street graffiti been photographed before Sir Charles Warren had ordered it to be erased, the police might have possessed a vital clue as to its author and therefore its significance.

  Again with the exception of Miller’s Court, the authorities failed to preserve the crime scenes. After an initial cursory glance around the immediate vicinity of the murders for cart tracks and a murder weapon they allowed crowds of curious onlookers to within a few feet of the bodies, thereby compromising the location and risking the obliteration of vital evidence such as footprints. Any physical clues left at the scene were washed away in the haste to scrub the stains from the streets.

  Wasted opportunities

  While a handful of resourceful investigators, such as the French criminologist Professor R.A. Reiss, were applying simple scientific methods and deductive reasoning in the manner of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s infallible fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, the British police still believed that the only sure way of securing a conviction was to catch the culprit in the act, or rely on witnesses and informers to identify the guilty party. Failing that, the alternative was to question everyone in the area at the time of the crime and follow up every lead – and while this method may have been practical for tracking down a known local character who had been seen fleeing the scene of the crime it proved impractical in tracking a shadow. No one had witnessed the Ripper in the act so they couldn’t lead the police to him or his associates.

  Moreover, the Ripper was not the type of criminal the British police were used to dealing with. He was a lone killer who murdered strangers at random and so there was nothing to tie him to his victims. Had the motive been robbery there was a good chance that the stolen goods might have been traced and the culprit brought to justice. If it had been a crime of passion a relationship might have been established and friends of the deceased might have been pressed to provide a description. But the victims were strangers and the motive appears to have been gratuitous sadism, so instead of pursuing a trail the police scattered in all directions following a thousand false leads down as many blind alleys. With no serious leads to pursue they were forced to investigate suspicions, prejudices and malicious rumours.

  The detectives were certainly familiar with the neighbourhood and its criminal fraternity, but they were fatally inflexible and blinkered in their approach to an investigation that demanded a radical new strategy.

  Though criminal profiling was not fully developed as an aspect of forensic science until the 1970s, Dr Bond, the police surgeon, offered a detailed sketch of the Ripper in a report to Sir Charles Warren after the final murder in which he implies that the Whitechapel murderer was the Victorian detective’s nightmare – a lone unpredictable killer without friends or associates in the criminal underworld who could be induced to inform on him. Like so many serial killers he may have disarmed his victims by assuming an air of vulnerability, or he may have lured them with his superficial charm. By day he probably appeared unremarkable, even harmless, and so would not have drawn suspicion by his actions or his manner. The only people who would have seen the madness in his eyes were his victims in the seconds before he choked the life out of them.

  The one thing that can be said of the Ripper killings is that they impressed upon the authorities the obvious need to establish basic crime-scene procedures, specifically the preservation of trace evidence as well as the routine photographing of the crime scenes. It was only with the Ripper killings that the British police were forced to face the fact that their leisurely methods may have been sufficient to catch petty thieves and drunken ruffians, but they were grossly inadequate for ensnaring an unpredictable, predatory serial killer.

  Ten years before the East End atrocities Scotland Yard had established the first plain-clothes detective force, the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) but had failed to arm this elite squad with the modern tools and techniques of crime detection which were readily available. Instead, the British police chose to rely on tried and tested methods which belonged to an earlier age. Jack the Ripper woke them up to the harsh realities of the coming century.

  The callous ritual sacrifice of Mary Kelly

  It was generally believed at the time of the murders that the Ripper was a religious maniac. If true, it might explain why he mutilated Mary Kelly to the extent that he did and why he ceased his reign of terror immediately afterwards.

  Mark Daniel, author of a novelization of the Jack the Ripper TV mini-series starring Michael Caine, recently proposed a scenario in which the killing served as a ritual sacrifice made in order to atone for the murderer’s previous transgressions and he has identified a specific extract from the Old Testament which may have provided the inspiration.

  The presence of an uncommonly large fire in the grate at Miller’s Court had puzzled the police at the time as it was clearly too big to have been lit solely to provide illumination in such a tiny room. When scraps of clothing were found among the ashes it was presumed that the murderer had used it to consume some of his own bloodstained clothing, but a friend of Kelly’s later identified the charred remnants as belonging to clothes she had left earlier that day for Mary to mend. Burnt clothing produces smoke which would have filled the cramped room and made it impossible for the killer to breathe, but human fat would have fed the flames and prevented the fabric from creating smoke.

  They sought him here, they sought him there, but they never quite knew who they were looking for.

  Chapters 5–7 of Leviticus might provide a clue to the motive behind the murder:

  ‘And if a soul sin . . . then he shall bear his iniquity,

  Or if a soul touch any unclean thing . . .

  he shall also be unclean, and guilty . . .

  Or if he touch the uncleanness of man . . .

  then he shall be guilty.’

  The language may be archaic but the meaning is clear. Sex with a whore, another man or an animal or the touching of unclean meat (as a horse butcher or slaughterman would be forced to do on a daily basis) would be considered a sin against God. Such a sin could only be expunged by a ritual sacrifice.

  ‘And he shall bring his trespass offering unto th
e Lord for his sin which he hath sinned, a female from the flock . . . for a sin offering . . .

  And he shall bring them unto the priest, who shall offer that which is for the sin offering first, and wring off his head from his neck, but shall not divide it asunder

  . . . And he shall offer the second for a burnt offering

  . . . and it shall be forgiven him.’

  Further verses give instructions for preparing the offering and evoke images of the hideous mutilations uncovered at Miller’s Court and the other murder sites.

  ‘It is the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning . . .

  And he shall offer of it all the fat thereof, the rump and the fat that covereth the inwards.

  And the two kidneys, and the fat which is on them, which is by the flanks, and the caul that is above the liver, with the kidneys, it shall he take away:

  . . . And the priest that offereth any man’s burnt offering, even the priest shall have to himself the skin of the burnt offering which he hath offered . . .

  His own hand shall bring the offerings of the Lord made by fire, the fat with the breast, it shall he bring . . .

  And the right shoulder shall ye give unto the priest for an heave offering . . . ’

  This scenario might also explain the significance of the Goulston Street graffiti, assuming, of course, that the author was the murderer. ‘The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing’ could then be seen as an attempt to blame the Jews for having suggested that one’s sins could be forgiven by a ritual killing, a practice foreign to the Christian tradition.

  By taking instructions from the Bible the Ripper would be able to justify his actions in his own twisted mind and return to some semblance of normal life free of guilt and maybe even with a sense of satisfaction and pride in his work.

  The broken window is arrowed in this photograph of Mary Kelly’s lodging house taken the day after her murder

  The diary of Jack the Ripper?

  ‘Before I have finished all England will know the name I have given myself.’

  In 1991 workmen who were carrying out some rewiring in an old Victorian house in Liverpool pulled up the floorboards and found a black leatherbound volume which had lain there undisturbed for more than a century. Many pages had been torn out from the front section leaving just 63 leaves of handwritten entries in a fluid scrawl. But on closer examination it was seen to be no ordinary journal but the psychotic ramblings of a tormented soul who signed the final entry ‘Jack the Ripper’.

  At least that is the version of events according to a local newspaper. The owner of the diary, scrap metal dealer Michael Barrett, claimed to have been given it by a dying friend, Tony Deveraux, who, we are to assume, obtained it from the workmen who discovered it. Before and after publication, serious doubts were raised as to the diary’s authenticity and Barrett was accused of perpetrating a hoax to rival that attempted by the forger of the notorious Hitler diaries, or at least attempting to pass off a forgery by an unidentified source as the genuine article. In his defence Barrett claimed that he pressed his friend to reveal how he came to possess the book, but Deveraux refused to say anything more. However, Deveraux’s daughter denied any knowledge of her father having owned such a book and added that he would have bequeathed it to her had it been his. The new owner of Battlecrease, the house in which it was allegedly found, also denied any knowledge of the discovery, as did the owner of the building firm which carried out the rewiring, who went so far as to question all of his workers. There was, however, a possible if tenuous link, and that is that the building workers were known to drink in the same pub in Liverpool, The Saddle Inn, which Deveraux and Barrett also frequented.

  But what would be the significance of the missing pages? Critics of the diary suggested that they were torn out because they would have revealed the identity of the book’s real owner and they point out that certain stains and marks prove that it had been a photo album. In response, advocates of the diaries’ authenticity argued that the author would have torn out the preceding pages to obliterate any reminder of his wife and family. And they ask why a mentally disturbed individual would purchase a new journal when a defaced family journal would serve a more symbolic, ritualistic purpose.

  The ‘Jack the Ripper’ diary

  The author of the diary

  As for the ‘author’ of the disputed diary, we are asked to believe that it was none other than James Maybrick, a wealthy Liverpudlian cotton merchant and the previous owner of Battlecrease, who was poisoned by his wife Florence in May 1889. His murder led to one of the most celebrated trials of the 19th century, but he had never even been considered as a suspect in the Whitechapel murders. The diary does not identify Maybrick by name, but it was allegedly found in a part of the house that had been his study and there are implicit references to his wife and children as well as his wife’s lover, against whom he becomes increasingly bitter: ‘I long for peace of mind, but I sincerely believe that it will not come until I have sought my revenge on the whore and the whore master.’

  This shifting focus from his unfaithful wife to adulterous women in general sounds like the authentic voice of a psychotic, according to forensic psychologist Dr David Forshaw.

  But a major problem remains. What connection did a Liverpool businessman have with London’s East End? The answer may lie in the following passage.

  ‘Foolish bitch. I know for certain that she has arranged a rendezvous with him in Whitechapel [referring to Whitechapel, Liverpool]. So be it. My mind is finally made. London it shall be and why not? Is it not an ideal location. Whitechapel, Liverpool, Whitechapel, London, ha ha no one could possibly place it together.’

  The connection may not be as unlikely as it first appears. In his younger years Maybrick had lived in London’s East End and at the time of the murders it is believed that he kept a mistress there. The journey would have been a matter of just a few hours by train, but even so he wouldn’t have wanted to undertake it too often and this might account for the long gaps between the killings.

  Today it is generally accepted that Polly Nichols was the first Ripper victim, but at the time the deaths of Emma Smith and Martha Tabram were attributed to the Whitechapel murderer, making Nichols the third. As the diary refers to the Bucks Row murder as the first it made it either a contemporary account by the only person who knew the truth or a modern fake.

  The diary also mentions two small but significant details in the murder of Elizabeth Stride which only the most ardent Ripperologist would know, that she had red hair and that there is a possibility that her throat had been slashed with her own knife.

  There is also a reference to two objects found at one of the murder scenes – an empty tin matchbox and a red leather cigarette case which the author of the diary claims to have left behind as a clue. Neither of these two objects were public knowledge until 1987 when the inventory detailing the victim’s belongings was published.

  Another factor in the diary’s favour was the choice of subject. If it was a fake it would have been far easier to have made a lesser suspect fit the facts than Maybrick, whose life is known in greater detail.

  Sketch of Elizabeth Stride’s murder scene.

  A possible suspect?

  As for Maybrick having motive, means and opportunity, it is a matter of historical record that his wife had a lover and that Maybrick had an addiction to strychnine and arsenic which, when taken in small doses, were a mild aphrodisiac and stimulant. A habitual user might have delusions of infallibility and be oblivious to danger or the possibility of being caught. Add to this the fact that Maybrick’s whereabouts cannot be accounted for on the night of the five ‘official’ Whitechapel murders and perhaps there is a compelling case for adding him to the list of suspects.

  Maybrick was a well-known hypochondriac and visited his physician an astonishing 70 times during 1888, all of which are a matter of record. Not one of these appointments conflicts with the dates of the five ca
nonical Ripper murders. Either the forger was uncannily lucky or the diary may just have been genuine.

  Handwriting experts have declared the writing to be stylistically ‘of the period’ and the distinctive features to be characteristic of a deranged person. Moreover, these features (such as the crossing of two separated ‘t’s with a single flourish) reappear throughout the diary, which would be difficult for a forger to maintain. On the other hand, the script is wholly unlike that of James Maybrick when compared to his will. Again, advocates of the diary’s authenticity have a ready explanation. Maybrick was too ill to write his will and so dictated it to his brother. This scenario is reinforced by the fact that the name of Maybrick’s daughter has been misspelled in the will, a mistake a father would never make.

  Forensics find the truth

  The ‘acid test’ for any disputed document is, of course, the forensic dating of the paper and ink. In the case of the Ripper diary the British Museum confirmed that the paper did indeed date from the Victorian era (which was never in dispute) and that the fading of the ink was also consistent with its age.

  However, powdered Victorian ink can be purchased in many antique stores and, though it may be in a poor state, it can be rendered usable by dilution with water. Ink can also be artificially dated, as the forgers of the Mussolini diaries have shown, by baking it in an oven for 30 minutes.

  For many years following the publication of the diary, Ripper scholars were divided between those who accepted its authenticity with reservations and those who dismissed it as a forgery out of hand. It was only when ink samples were subjected to a specific test for the presence of chloroacetamide, a modern preservative, in October 1994 that the truth was finally revealed. The test proved positive. The diary was a fake and Barrett apparently confessed to being its author, though it is possible he only did this to remove the pressure of the publicity to which he was subjected. There are still Ripperologists who contend that the ink test is inconclusive perhaps because, like the general public, they prefer the myth to the facts.