Complete History of Jack the Ripper
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13 Dew, I Caught Crippen, pp. 124–5; DN 8 October 1888.
14 DT 1 and 2 October 1888; Star 1 October 1888; ELA 6 October 1888; PMG 10 October 1888.
15 Warren, 3 October 1888, to Chairman of Whitechapel Board of Works, T, DT and DN 4 October.
16 Wensley, Detective Days (London, 1931), p. 4. Interestingly, Warren ordered trials of several varieties of boots with ‘india-rubber, waterproof or silent soles’ but constables complained that they were tiring to wear and made their feet sore (Memo on noiseless boots sent to Mr Bulling of the Central News, 6 October 1888, PRO, MEPO 1/55, ff. 321–3).
17 DT and DN 10 and 17 October 1888; T 31 October 1888.
18 Star 1 October 1888; DT 2 October 1888.
19 Police notice, 30 September 1888, MEPO 3/141, f. 184.
20 Warren, 3 October 1888, to Chairman of Whitechapel Board of Works, T 4 October; report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 19 October 1888, on Stride murder, HO 144/221/A49301C/8a; Star 4 October 1888.
21 Ellis, 3 October 1888, to Matthews; Warren, 4 October 1888, to Ruggles-Brise; Matthews, 5 October 1888, to Warren; all in HO 144/221/A49301C/8.
22 The officers engaged in the search recorded their findings in small notebooks, none of which, sadly, have survived. My account rests on: official notice of Warren, 17 October 1888, DT 18 October; report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 19 October 1888, and minute of Dr Anderson, 23 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8a; DN 13 and 19 October 1888; Star 17 October 1888; DT 19 October 1888.
23 T 1 and 2 October 1888; HO 144/221/A49301E/1. Edwin Brough (T 8 October 1888) said that the dog used in the 1876 case was ‘a mongrel with little or no trace of bloodhound about it.’
24 Macnaghten, Days of My Years, pp. 202–3; Dew, I Caught Crippen, pp. 145–6; H. M. Mackusick, in DT 19 October 1888; Edwin Brough, 5 October 1888, in T 8 October.
25 Warren, undated, to Lindley, PRO, MEPO 1/48; Warren, 5 October 1888, to Under Sec. of State, and minute of Henry Matthews, 7 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301E/2.
26 DN 10 October 1888.
27 T 19 October 1888; statement of Mr Taunton, T 13 November 1888.
28 Taunton’s statement, T 13 November 1888.
29 Warren, 23 October 1888, to Under Sec. of State, HO 144/221/A49301E/3.
30 DT 10 November 1888; for a Radical lampoon, see Howells & Skinner, The Ripper Legacy, p. 86; for the view that the dogs constituted a deterrent to the murderer see H. M. Mackusick in DT 19 October 1888 and Watkin W. Williams, Sir Charles Warren’s grandson, in a letter to Tom Cullen, Autumn of Terror, p. 160.
31 The whole question was reviewed in two Home Office memorandums of 6 and 19 October 1888, HO 144/220/A49301B/19.
32 Matthews, 5 October 1888, to Ruggles-Brise, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. hist. c. 723, ff. 132–7; Warren, 6 October 1888, to Matthews, and Matthews, 7 October, to Warren, HO 144/220/A49301B/9; Lushington, 17 October 1888, to Warren, HO 151/4, ff. 251–4; Warren, 17 October 1888, to Matthews, HO 144/220/A49301B/12.
33 Warren, 6 October 1888, to Matthews, HO 144/220/A49301B/9; Warren, 9 October 1888, to Under Sec. State, and Lushington, 10 October, to Matthews, HO 144/220/A49301B/8; Warren, 17 October 1888, to Matthews, HO 144/220/A49301B/12; Warren, same date, to Murdoch, PRO, MEPO 1/48.
34 PMG 8 October 1888; Anderson, Lighter Side of My Official Life, p. 136; draft letter of Warren, 25 October 1888, to Lushington, MEPO 3/141, ff. 158–9.
35 Swanson’s report, 19 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8a.
36 Dew, I Caught Crippen, p. 112; for Abberline, ‘On Duty in Plain Clothes’, Cassell’s Saturday Journal, Vol. X, No. 452, 28 May 1892, p. 852, and PMG 24 March 1903.
37 Report of Inspector McWilliam, 27 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8b; Rumbelow, Complete Jack the Ripper (1987), p. 227.
38 Minute of Sir Charles Warren, 13 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301D/1; Anderson’s minute, 23 October 1888, and Warren, 24 October, to Under Sec. State, HO 144/221/A49301C/8a.
39 For Texas murders, DN 2 October 1888; DT 6 October 1888; Star 12 October 1888.
40 Statements of Albert Backert, 30 September and 1 October 1888, DN 1 and 2 October.
41 DN 10 and 17 October 1888; DT 10 October 1888; ELA 20 October 1888.
42 Statements of James Risdon Bennett and L. Forbes Winslow, 1 October 1888, Evening News 1 October; Edgar Sheppard, 1 October, to T, in T 2 October 1888; statements of Dr Blackwell, 30 September 1888, in DN 1 October, and Dr Brown, Evening News 1 October 1888.
43 DT 31 October 1888.
44 Dew, I Caught Crippen, pp. 86, 95–6, 150.
15 ‘I Want to go to the Lord Mayor’s Show’
1 Thames Magistrates’ Court register, GLRO, PS/TH/A1/11.
2 For Barnett’s accounts of Mary’s past and his life with her, see his statement to the police, 9 November 1888, copy filed with CPM; his inquest deposition, 12 November 1888, CPM; and his press statements in DN and Star 10 November and DT 12 November 1888.
All attempts to verify Barnett’s statements have been unsuccessful or unconvincing. For gallant attempts see Begg, Jack the Ripper, pp. 211–2; Mark Madden, ‘The Tragedy of Mary Kelly’, Ripperana, No. 6, October 1993, pp. 26–8. Barnett himself has been the subject of more productive research. A tall, fair-complexioned fish porter, he was thirty at the time of the murders and died of bronchitis at 106 Red Lion Street in 1926. See, Bruce Paley, ‘A New Theory on the Jack the Ripper Murders,’ True Crime Monthly, April 1982, pp. 3–13; Mark Madden, ‘Jack the Ripper?’, Ripperana, No. 6, October 1993, pp. 2–6.
3 Star 12 November 1888. Mrs Carthy was probably Mrs Mary McCarthy of 1 Breezer’s Hill. She is not known to have been related to John McCarthy of Dorset Street.
4 Statement of ‘another girl’ who knew Kelly, 9 November 1888, DN 10 November 1888.
5 Statements of Elizabeth Phoenix, 11 November 1888, Star 12 November; Elizabeth Prater, 9 November 1888, DN and Star 10 November; Caroline Maxwell, 9 November 1888, DN 10 November.
6 Statement of Julia Venturney, 9 November 1888, to police, copy filed with CPM.
7 The identity of the prostitute cannot be established. Barnett (DT 12 November 1888) calls her ‘Julia’ which suggests that she might have been Julia Venturney. However, by 8 November Venturney was definitely living at 1 Miller’s Court and neither in her statement to the police nor in her inquest testimony did she give any hint of a former residence with Mary Kelly.
8 Barnett’s inquest testimony reads: ‘I identify her [Mary’s body] by the ear and the eyes.’ Both ears, however, had been partially severed by the murderer and I suspect Barnett was misheard and really testified that he had identified the body by the hair and eyes.
9 Statement of Mrs Prater, 9 November 1888, DN 10 November.
10 My reconstruction of the finding of Mary’s body rests principally upon the statements of Thomas Bowyer and John McCarthy, 9 November 1888, to police, copies filed with CPM; depositions of Thomas Bowyer and John McCarthy, 12 November 1888, CPM, ff. 1–3; press statements of John McCarthy, 9 November 1888, T and DN 10 November.
Bowyer speaks of the ‘blinds’ or ‘curtain’ at the broken window of No. 13. A report in DT 12 November 1888, and Inspector Dew in his reminiscences, both aver that the ‘curtain’ was merely an old coat hung across the inside of the window to exclude the draught. It may have been the man’s black overcoat Maria Harvey left at No. 13 the previous evening.
11 Dew’s memories of the Kelly murder will be found in I Caught Crippen, pp. 86, 143–55. DT 10 November 1888 calls Bowyer ‘a pensioned soldier’. He certainly does not look like a ‘youth’ in the sketches of him in The Penny Illustrated Paper 17 November 1888 and on the front cover of The Illustrated Police News 24 November 1888.
12 Depositions of Dr Phillips and Inspector Abberline, 12 November 1888, CPM, ff. 9, 11.
13 Deposition of Dr Phillips, 12 November 1888, CPM, f. 9.
14 Anderson, 25 October 1888, to Bond, extract enclosed with Anderson, 13 November 1888, to Under Sec. State, HO 144/221/A49301C/21.
16 Dr Thomas Bond, ‘Notes of examination of body of woman found murdered & mutilated in Dorset Street,’ MEPO 3/3153, ff. 12–14. Although stamped 16 November 1888 by the Metropolitan Police authorities the document itself is not dated. It is, however, almost certainly the special ‘annexed report’ on Mary’s injuries referred to in Bond’s general report to Anderson of 10 November (MEPO 3/140, ff. 220–3; HO 144/221/A49301C/21). The annexed document was detached from the general report at some early date and has, until now, been presumed lost. Hitherto our understanding of the appearances in Miller’s Court has primarily rested upon erroneous press reports, especially T and DN 10 November 1888, and Illustrated Police News 17 November 1888. Neither these nor Bond’s report substantiate the remarks allegedly made by Chief Inspector Henry Moore to the American journalist R. Harding Davis in August 1889: ‘He cut the skeleton so clean of flesh that when I got here I could hardly tell whether it was a man or a woman. He hung the different parts of the body on nails and over the backs of chairs. It must have taken him an hour and a half in all.’ (PMG 4 November 1889)
17 Star 10 November 1888.
18 T 10 November 1888. McCarthy’s account of the disposition of the various parts of Mary’s body was, understandably in the circumstances, inaccurate.
19 DN 10 November 1888.
20 T 10 November 1888.
21 Warren, 9 November 1888, to Lushington, and ‘Telephone message from Police’, 9 November 1888, HO 144/221/A49301F/1; E. S. Johnson, 9 November 1888, to Mr Wortley, HO 144/221/A49301C/8.
22 T 12 November 1888; deposition of Inspector Abberline, 12 November 1888, T and DT 13 November.
23 Compare, for example, the reports in T and DT 12 and 13 November 1888.
24 Bond, ‘Notes of examination of body of woman found murdered & mutilated in Dorset Street’, MEPO 3/3153, ff. 15–18.
25 Bond, 10 November 1888, to Anderson, HO 144/221/A49301C/21 and MEPO 3/140 ff. 220–3.
26 Matthews, 10 November 1888, to Lushington, HO 144/220/A49301B/15; Lushington, 10 November 1888, to Warren, enclosing draft bill, MEPO 3/3153, ff. 5–8; T 12 November 1888.
27 Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, Vol. CCCXXX, pp. 902–4; Vol. CCCXXXI, pp. 15–6.
28 Quoted by Cullen, Autumn of Terror, p. 186.
29 Star and T 10 November 1888.
16 ‘Oh! Murder!’
1 Western Mail, 12 November 1888, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper, pp. 149–50.
2 Deposition of Thomas Bowyer, 12 November 1888, CPM, f. 2.
3 GLRO: MJ/SPC, NE 1888, Box 3, Case Paper 19, cited in present work as CPM.
4 Statement of Maria Harvey to police, 9 November 1888, copy filed with CPM; deposition of Maria Harvey, 12 November 1888, CPM, f. 10.
5 For Barnett, see chap. 15, n. 2.
6 Statement of Mary Ann Cox to police, 9 November 1888, copy filed with CPM; deposition of Mary Ann Cox, 12 November 1888, CPM, ff. 3–5.
7 Statement of Elizabeth Prater to police, 9 November 1888, copy filed with CPM; deposition of Mrs Prater, 12 November 1888, CPM, ff. 5–6.
8 Statement of Sarah Lewis to police, 9 November 1888, copy filed with CPM; deposition of Sarah Lewis, 12 November 1888, CPM, ff. 7–8.
9 The Britannia, kept by Walter and Matilda Ringer, at the corner of Dorset and Commercial Streets.
10 Statement of Caroline Maxwell to police, 9 November 1888, copy filed with CPM; statement of Caroline Maxwell, 9 November 1888, DN 10 November; and deposition of Caroline Maxwell, 12 November 1888, CPM, ff. 6–7.
11 T 12 November 1888.
12 Statement of George Hutchinson, 12 November 1888, MEPO 3/140, ff. 227–9.
13 Statement of George Hutchinson, 13 November 1888, T and Star 14 November.
14 Report of Inspector Abberline, 12 November 1888, MEPO 3/140, ff. 230–1.
15 ELA 24 November 1888.
17 The End of the Terror
1 DT 16 November 1888.
2 DT 13 and 14 November 1888.
3 Queen Victoria, 10 November 1888, to Salisbury; Victoria, 13 November 1888, to Matthews. G. E. Buckle (ed.), Letters of Queen Victoria (London, 1930), 3rd Series, Vol. I, pp. 447, 449.
4 Warren, ‘The Police of the Metropolis,’ Murray’s Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 23, November 1888, pp. 577–94.
5 Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, Vol. CCCXXXI, p. 148.
6 He was discharged on 23 November. T and Star 19 November 1888; DT 24 November 1888.
7 Star 16 November 1888.
8 T 12 November 1888.
9 Cullen, Autumn of Terror, pp. 93, 214.
10 Monro, 18 July 1889, to Ruggles-Brise, HO 144/220/A49301B/20. The documents relating to the extra allowance will be found at HO 144/221/A49301G/1–7 and MEPO 3/141, ff. 1–7.
Anderson, replying to the Queen’s queries of 13 November 1888, also gave details of police reinforcements in Whitechapel. He said that the ‘special “detection” force’, i.e. officers in plain clothes, numbered 3 inspectors, 9 sergeants and 6 constables after the Chapman murder of 8 September. In October this strength was increased by 51 men and another 28 were employed to carry out the house-to-house search. ‘The force at present,’ he wrote after the Kelly murder, ‘consists of 2 inspectors and 56 constables.’ Anderson also indicated that the strength of the uniformed sergeants and constables on night duty in H Division was 120 in November 1888. Of this number 43 had been provided by a special augmentation of the division and 77 had been ‘supplied nightly from other divisions to fill the vacancies caused by men being supplied in plain clothes as above.’ (Quoted by Howells & Skinner, The Ripper Legacy, p. 193). Without more information these details cannot be reconciled with Monro’s figures.
11 Deposition of John McCormack, 17 July 1889, DT 18 July.
12 Deposition of Elizabeth Ryder, 17 July 1889, DT 18 July; depositions of Margaret Franklin and Catherine Hughes, 18 July 1889, DT 19 July; statements of Elizabeth Ryder and Margaret Franklin, 22 July 1889, MEPO 3/140, ff. 275–6; report of Sergeant John McCarthy, 24 July 1889, MEPO 3/140, f. 278.
13 Depositions of PC Allen, PC Andrews, Sergeant Badham and Sarah Smith, 17 July 1889, DT 18 July; deposition of Inspector Reid, 18 July 1889, DT 19 July; reports of PC Andrews and Sergeant Badham, 17 July 1889, MEPO 3/140, ff. 272–4.
14 For the medical evidence, see: depositions of Dr Phillips, 18 July and 14 August 1889, DT 19 July and 15 August; medical report of Dr Phillips, 22 July 1889, MEPO 3/140, ff. 263–71; Bond, 18 July 1889, to Anderson, MEPO 3/140, ff. 259–62.
15 Monro, 17 July 1889, to Under Sec. State, and report of Superintendent Arnold, 17 July 1889, HO 144/221/A49301I/1; Anderson ‘Lighter Side of My Official Life’, Blackwood’s Magazine (March 1910) p. 357 n. 1. For Bond, see n. 14 above. For plain clothes patrols and uniformed reinforcements, HO 151/4, ff. 480–1; MEPO 3/141, ff. 9, 12, 14; HO 144/220/A49301B/20; HO 144/221/A49301G/9.
16 Reports of Chief Inspector Swanson, 10 September 1889, and Monro, 11 September 1889, MEPO 3/140, ff. 128–33, 139; deposition of Dr Phillips, 24 September 1889, Evening Standard, 24 September.
17 There is a prodigious amount of evidence on the Coles murder. My account rests principally upon the inquest proceedings in DT 16, 18, 21, 24 and 28 February 1891, the police court proceedings against Sadler, reported in DT 17 and 25 February and 4 March 1891, and the police reports in MEPO 3/140, ff. 65–121. See also reminiscent accounts: Richardson, From the City to Fleet Street, pp. 277–9; Wensley, Detective Days, pp. 4–6; Dew, I Caught Crippen, pp. 160–1; Benjamin Leeson, Lost London (London, N. D.), pp. 54–60.
18 Wensley, Detective Days, p. 5
19 T 27 February, 7 and 28 March 1895; PMG 7 May 1895; Winslow, Recollections of Forty Years, pp. 280–3.
18 Murderer of Strangers
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1 Morning Advertiser, 30 March 1903; PMG 2 April 1903; Eastern Post, 3 February 1893.
2 Report of Dr Phillips, 22 July 1889, MEPO 3/140, f. 270.
3 Report of Melville Macnaghten, 23 February 1894, MEPO 3/141, ff. 178–9; Macnaghten, Days of My Years, p. 55; Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 28 May 1892; PMG 24 March 1903; Anderson, Lighter Side of My Official Life, pp. 135, 137; Dew, I Caught Crippen, pp. 91, 93–4, 97, 106, 156.
4 Sean P. Day, in Peter Underwood, Jack the Ripper: One Hundred Years of Mystery, pp. 158–61; Jon Ogan, ‘Martha Tabram – the Forgotten Ripper Victim?’, Journal of Police History Society, Vol. V (1990), pp. 79–83.
5 ELO 1 September 1888.
6 Quoted by Howells & Skinner, The Ripper Legacy, p. 25.
7 Star 1 October 1888.
8 Knight, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, pp. 144–9.
9 ELA 10 November 1888.
10 Morning Advertiser, 30 March 1903.
11 Dew, I Caught Crippen, pp. 126, 149–50.
12 PMG 4 November 1889.
13 Begg, Fido & Skinner, Jack the Ripper A to Z, p. 229.
14 T 4 October 1888.
15 See, William G. Eckert, ‘The Ripper Project,’ American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1989), pp. 168–70.
16 David Canter, Criminal Shadows (London, 1994), pp. 100–103.
17 Deposition of Frederick Wilkinson, 4 October 1888, DT 5 October.
18 Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 28 May 1892.
19 Camps, Camps on Crime, p. 38; Farson, Jack the Ripper, p. 12.
20 Nick Warren, 18 November 1993, to author; Nick Warren, ‘The Thames Torso Murders 1887–9’, The Criminologist, Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer 1993, pp. 80–82.
21 Minute of Godfrey Lushington, 13 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301D/1; report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 19 October 1888, on Stride murder, HO 144/221/A49301C/8a.
22 PMG 24 March 1903.
23 I am deliberately discounting the description attributed to Sergeant Stephen White in The People’s Journal, 26 September 1919. This is clearly fiction developed out of memories of the Berner Street and Mitre Square murders and of Mrs Mortimer.