Complete History of Jack the Ripper (88 page)

1
Report of Sergeant Stephen White, 4 October 1888, MEPO 3/140, ff. 212–3.

2
The investigations of Grand and Batchelor are described in
The Evening News
, 4 October 1888.

3
Evening News
, 4 October 1888.

4
Report of Inspector Henry Moore, 4 October 1888, and report of Sergeant White, same date, MEPO 3/140, ff. 211 and 213–4 respectively.

5
Statement of Matthew Packer, 4 October 1888, MEPO 3/140, ff. 215–6.

6
DT
, 6 October 1888; J. Hall Richardson,
From the City to Fleet Street
, pp. 218–9.

7
The Police Gazette
, 19 October 1888.

8
For release of Smith’s account to press, see ch. 10, n. 26.

9
Statements of Louis Diemschutz, Isaac Kozebrodski and Mrs Mortimer, 30 September 1888,
DN
, 1 October.

10
Depositions of Dr Phillips and Dr Blackwell, 5 October 1888,
DT
, 6 October.

11
Statement of Louis Diemschutz, 30 September 1888,
DN
, 1 October; deposition of Louis Diemschutz, 1 October 1888,
T
, 2 October.

12
Report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 19 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8a.

13
Star
, 2 October 1888. Rewards are discussed in chap. 14.

14
Evening News
, 20 and 31 October 1888;
DT
, 15 and 16 November 1888; HO 144/221/A49301C/20;
Star
24 November 1888.

15
Dew,
I Caught Crippen
, pp. 130–1; McCormick,
Identity of Jack the Ripper
(1959), p. 72.

16
Report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 19 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8a; statement of William West,
DN
, 3 October 1888.

1
A list of the woman’s clothes and belongings, submitted to the inquest by Inspector Edward Collard, is preserved amongst the coroner’s papers at the Corporation of London Records Office, Coroner’s Inquests (L), 1888, No. 135; see also,
DT
and
T
1 October 1888.

2
DT
2 October 1888.

3
Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary records give Kelly’s age as forty-six in December 1886 and forty-nine in November 1887. See notes 5 and 6 below.

4
This account of Kate’s family and early life has been reconstructed from the following sources: statement of John Kelly, 2 October 1888,
T
3
October; statement of John Kelly, 3 October 1888,
Star
3 October; statements of Eliza Gold and Emma Jones, 3 October 1888,
DN
4 October; depositions of Eliza Gold, John Kelly and Frederick William Wilkinson, 4 October 1888, and of Annie Philips, 11 October 1888, CPL, ff. 1–5, 26–7; statement of Elizabeth Fisher,
Wolverhampton Chronicle
, 10 October 1888; parish register of Bushbury, Staffordshire, County Record Office, Stafford; registers of births, marriages, and deaths, St Catherine’s House; 1841 (Wolverhampton) and 1851 (Wolverhampton and Birmingham) censuses, Birmingham Public Library, microfilms; 1851 census (West Street, Bermondsey), PRO, HO 107/1562; Shelden, ‘Victims of Jack the Ripper’, p. 51.

5
Surviving records are often very imprecise on the matter of age. In the 1841 census George Eddowes is set down as thirty and in that of 1851 as forty-two. Catharine, his wife, is recorded as twenty-five (1841), thirty-six (1851) and forty-two (death certificate, 1855).

6
Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary, Admission & Discharge Book, 1887–8, GLRO, StBG/Wh/123/19.

7
Walter Besant,
East London
(London, 1901), p. 309.

8
This account of Kate’s last days with John Kelly rests on: depositions of John Kelly and Frederick William Wilkinson, 4 October 1888, in CPL ff. 2–5 and
DT
5 October; statement of John Kelly, 2 October 1888,
T
3 October; statement of John Kelly, 3 October 1888,
Star
3 October; statement of John Kelly, undated,
DT
4 October 1888.

Kelly repeatedly said that Kate pawned his boots on the morning of Saturday, 29 September, but the pawnticket recovered from Kate’s body was unquestionably dated 28 September. Mr Crawford, the City Solicitor, thereby deduced that the pawning took place on Friday evening, and at the inquest he combined with Coroner Langham to browbeat Kelly into admitting that he could not remember whether it occurred on Friday or Saturday, that he had been drinking at the time and was ‘all muddled up.’ However, a date of 28 September for the pawning doesn’t make sense because if Kate had the money for the boots on Friday why was she compelled to spend that night in the casual ward? Frederick Wilkinson, the deputy at Cooney’s, confirmed some of Kelly’s chronology, including the fact that Kelly, though
not
Kate, slept at his house on Friday night. Perhaps Joseph Jones, the pawnbroker, simply made a clerical error.

9
Depositions of PC Robinson, Sergeant Byfield and PC Hurt, 11 October 1888, CPL ff. 28–31 and
DT
12 October.

10
Depositions of John Kelly and Frederick Wilkinson, 4 October 1888, CPL, ff. 2–3 and 5 respectively.

11
Statement of Eliza Gold, 3 October 1888,
DN
4 October.

12
Descriptions of Kate’s injuries are quoted from the official transcript of Dr Brown’s inquest deposition, 4 October 1888, CPL, ff. 14–21.

13
For Foster’s sketches, see ch. 9, n. 10; deposition of Dr Brown, CPL, f. 14.

14
Statement of Dr Brown,
Star
1 October 1888; deposition of Dr Brown, 4 October 1888, CPL, ff. 19, 21, 22; deposition of Dr Brown, 11 October 1888,
DT
12 October.

15
Deposition of Dr Brown, 4 October 1888, CPL, ff. 20, 21–2.

16
Deposition of Dr Brown, 4 October 1888,
DT
5 October.

17
Deposition of Dr Brown, 4 October 1888,
DT
and
DN
5 October;
Star
1 October 1888.

18
Depositions of Doctors G. W. Sequeira and William Sedgwick Saunders, 11 October 1888, CPL, ff. 24, 25.

19
Statement of Dr Sequeira,
Star
1 October 1888.

20
Report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 6 November 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8c. See also, statement of Dr Brown,
Evening News
1 October 1888, and Baxter’s summing up at Stride inquest, 23 October 1888,
T
24 October.

21
Unless otherwise stated my account of this sighting rests upon the depositions of Joseph Lawende and Joseph Hyam Levy, 11 October 1888, CPL, ff. 35–6 and 37 respectively. Lawende’s address was given by Inspector McWilliam as 79 Fenchurch Street (HO 144/221/A49301C/8b) and in the inquest record as 45 Norfolk Road, Dalston.

22
Deposition of Joseph Lawende, 11 October 1888,
DT
12 October.

23
The Police Gazette
, New Series, Vol. V, No. 502, 19 October 1888; report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 19 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8a.

24
Deposition of Joseph Lawende, 11 October 1888, CPL, f. 36; report of Inspector McWilliam, 27 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8b; report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 6 November 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8c; Smith,
From Constable to Commissioner
, pp. 158–9.

25
DT
1 October 1888;
T
2 October 1888; Smith,
From Constable to Commissioner
, p. 152; rumours of the ‘appointment theory’ seem to have inspired the confused and ill-informed piece of nonsense in the
Philadelphia Times
of 3 December 1888, clipping in MEPO 3/140, f. 7.

26
For the factual information on the murder noticed here, see depositions of Inspector Collard and Dr Brown, 4 October 1888, CPL, ff. 11, 13, 19–20, 22; depositions of Doctors Sequeira and Saunders, 11 October 1888, ff. 24, 25; list of Kate’s clothes and property, submitted by Inspector Collard, 4 October 1888, to inquest and filed with CPL.

27
Francis E. Camps,
Camps on Crime
(Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 38; Camps, foreword to Farson,
Jack the Ripper
, p. 12; N. P. Warren, cited by Begg, Fido & Skinner,
Jack the Ripper A to Z
, p. 41.

28
Deposition of PC Harvey, 11 October 1888, CPL, ff. 33–4. There was a post office on Harvey’s beat, in Aldgate between Houndsditch and Duke
Street. If this was the only point at which he could verify the time his estimate for Church Passage might have been out by several minutes.

29
Rumbelow,
Complete Jack the Ripper
, p. 159.

30
Dew,
I Caught Crippen
, p. 129.

31
Dew,
I Caught Crippen
, p. 137; report of Chief Inspector Henry Moore, 18 October 1896, MEPO 3/142, f. 158; letter of Sir Robert Anderson, April 1910, to a daily paper, quoted by Richardson,
From the City to Fleet Street
, p. 217; deposition of Detective Constable Halse, 11 October 1888, CPL, f. 42.

32
Adler, 13 October 1888, to Warren, quoted in Chaim Bermant,
Point of Arrival
, p. 117; statement of Sir Charles Warren,
DN
15 October 1888.

33
Reports of Chief Inspector Swanson and Sir Charles Warren, 6 November 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8c; minute of Sir Charles Warren, 13 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301D/1; Smith,
From Constable to Commissioner
, pp. 161–2.

34
Warren, 10 October 1888, to Lushington, PRO, MEPO 1/48; Adrian Morris, ‘Goulston Graffito – A New Angle?’,
Ripperana
, No. 7, January 1994, pp. 16–18.

35
Knight,
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution
, p. 179; Fairclough,
Ripper and the Royals
, p. 67; Begg,
Jack the Ripper
, pp. 127–8.

36
Statement of Dr Blackwell, 30 September 1888,
DN
1 October; report of Inspector McWilliam, 27 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8b; Smith,
From Constable to Commissioner
, p. 151; for Phillips, see statement of Dr Brown,
Evening News
1 October 1888, and Coroner Baxter’s summing up, 23 October 1888,
T
24 October.

37
Friedland,
Trials of Israel Lipski
, pp. 200–3.

38
Star
1 October 1888.

1
Stewart,
Jack the Ripper
, p. 102.

2
The ‘Dear Boss’ letter was written in red ink except for the postscript, set at right angles to the rest of the letter, which was in red crayon. The postcard no longer survives but to judge by facsimiles was probably written in red crayon.

The letter, with its envelope and the Central News editor’s cover note of 29 September 1888, disappeared from Metropolitan Police archives before 1928. In 1950 Philip Loftus evidently saw it in the possession of Gerald Donner, Sir Melville Macnaghten’s grandson, but after Donner’s death eighteen years later it disappeared again (Loftus,
The Guardian
, 7 October 1972). Then, in 1987, these documents were among a small bundle of Ripper records returned to the Curator of the Yard’s Black Museum in a plain brown envelope and they can now be seen at the
Public Record Office, MEPO 3/3153, ff. 1–4. The bundle had been posted in Croydon but all attempts to trace the sender failed (Neil Darbyshire, ‘Jack the Ripper letter and pictures returned to Yard 100 years after killings’,
DT
, 19 August 1988). Facsimiles of both letter and postcard are at MEPO 3/142, ff. 2–3.

3
The Metropolitan Police collection will be found at MEPO 3/142. For City Police examples, CLRO, Police Box 3.18, Nos. 224–6; Police Box 3.22, Nos. 369, 381–2; Police Box 3.23, Nos. 394–6.

4
My account of the ‘From hell’ parcel rests principally upon: report of Inspector McWilliam, 27 October 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8b; report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 6 November 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8c; statement of Joseph Aarons, 18 October 1888,
DT
19 October; Smith,
From Constable to Commissioner
, pp. 154–5.

5
After being handed in at Leman Street the original letter was forwarded to Scotland Yard. On 20 October Swanson loaned it to Inspector McWilliam of the City Police, who had it photographed and returned it four days later. Like so many other important Ripper documents it has since disappeared from the Metropolitan Police file. The present text is taken from a contemporary photograph, collected by E. K. Larkins and preserved at the Royal London Hospital Archives & Museum.

6
Statement of Joseph Aarons, 18 October 1888,
DT
19 October;
DN
19 October 1888; statement of Dr Openshaw, 19 October 1888,
Star
19 October.

7
Report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 6 November 1888.

8
Smith,
From Constable to Commissioner
, pp. 154–5.

9
DT
20 October 1888; report of Chief Inspector Swanson, 6 November 1888.

10
Statement of Emily Marsh, 19 October 1888,
DT
20 October.

11
McCormick,
Identity of Jack the Ripper
, pp. 78–9.

12
Whittington-Egan,
Casebook on Jack the Ripper
, p. 109; Knight,
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution
, p. 221.

13
Star
1 October 1888;
T
2 October 1888;
DT
4 October 1888.

14
DN
and
DT
1 October 1888.

15
Star
1 October 1888. An evening paper, it appeared on the streets after the Jack the Ripper postcard had been delivered.

16
Warren, 10 October 1888, to Lushington, PRO, MEPO 1/48; Anderson, ‘Lighter Side of My Official Life’, March 1910, p. 358; Begg,
Jack the Ripper
, p. 90.

17
The documents have become separated in the file. Chief Inspector Moore’s report is at MEPO 3/142, ff. 157–9. The letter (undated) and its covering note (dated 14 October 1896) will be found in the same file at ff. 234–5 and 211 respectively.

18
Macnaghten,
Days of My Years
, pp. 58–9. The Littlechild letter,
discovered by Stewart Evans in 1993, suggests that Tom Bulling and Charles Moore of the Central News were the police suspects. Bulling was the man who first forwarded the Jack the Ripper letter and postcard to Scotland Yard. See introduction p. xxv.

19
Examples are right (‘right track’, ‘right away’) and write (‘to write with’), caught, laughed, whores, squeal, enough, straight, and knife.

20
Begg, Fido & Skinner,
Jack the Ripper A to Z
, pp. 27–8.

21
Star
19 October 1888;
Evening News
, 20 October 1888.

22
In addition to Swanson and Smith, cited above n. 4, my account of the kidney rests on: deposition of Dr Gordon Brown, 4 October 1888, CPL, f. 20;
DT
, 20 October 1888; statement of Dr William Sedgwick Saunders,
Evening News
, 20 October 1888; Whittington-Egan,
Casebook on Jack the Ripper
, pp. 51–65; N. P. Warren, ‘A Postal Kidney,’
The Criminologist
, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 1989, pp. 12–15; statement of Dr Brown, 20 October 1888, quoted by Stewart Evans, ‘The Lusk Kidney’,
Ripperana
, No. 6, October 1993, p. 12.

23
Thomas J. Mann, ‘The Ripper and the Poet: A Comparison of Handwritings,’
WADE Journal
(Chicago), Vol. 2, No. 1, June 1975, pp. 1–31; cf., Derek Davis, ‘“Jack the Ripper” – The Handwriting Analysis’,
The Criminologist
, Vol. 9, No. 33, Summer 1974, pp. 62–9.

24
Mann, ‘The Ripper and the Poet’, pp. 9–10; Joseph Wright,
The English Dialect Dictionary
(London, 1905), VI, p. 201; William Matthews,
Cockney Past and Present: A Short History of the Dialect of London
(London, 1938), pp. 181–2, 184; P. W. Joyce,
English as We Speak It in Ireland
(1910; reprinted, Dublin, 1979), pp. 93, 99; Jeremiah J. Hogan,
The English Language in Ireland
(Dublin, 1927), pp. 69, 75–6.

25
The most influential such claim originated in the handwritten crime diaries of a medical man – Dr Thomas Dutton, MD, MRCP, LRCS, who died in Shepherds Bush in 1935. His diaries, compiled over sixty years and entitled
Chronicles of Crime
, disappeared after his death but author Donald McCormick claimed to have seen and taken notes from them as long ago as 1932 and, in his own book,
The Identity of Jack the Ripper
, published in 1959, printed what purport to be quotations and opinions from them. To judge from what McCormick tells us about Dutton the doctor made some quite extraordinary claims in connection with the murders.

He professed, for example, to have procured enlargements of 128 specimens of the alleged correspondence of Jack the Ripper by photographing them through a microscope attached to a camera and then to have deduced from his photographs that at least 34 were ‘definitely in the same handwriting’.

Thomas Mann is frankly sceptical about this claim. Nowhere, he points out, does McCormick offer any proof of the similarity in
handwriting of any two Ripper letters let alone the 34 alleged by Dutton. Since a plausible case for the Ripper’s authorship can only be made on behalf of the Lusk letter it would be instructive to learn whether this was one of the doctor’s thirty-four. We are not told. It is interesting to note, however, that McCormick seems to regard both the Lusk letter and that received by the Central News on 27 September as genuine when, as Mann confirms, these scripts are definitely
not
in the same hand.

Sadly, one’s doubts about Dutton go beyond the validity of any handwriting comparisons he may have made because neither this, nor many of the other claims attributed to him, ring true. His assertions that the police asked him to photograph the chalk message in Goulston Street and that his photograph ‘definitely established that the writing was the same as that in some of the letters’ is demonstrably fictitious. The contemporary records of the Ripper investigation do not once mention Dutton. And, as the wording in Smith’s memoir and, more importantly, Warren’s report of 6 November 1888, makes absolutely clear, the Goulston Street writing was rubbed out
before
it could be photographed. Indeed, this was what the subsequent dispute between the Metropolitan and City forces was all about. Had Dutton’s story been true there would have been no occasion for McWilliam and Smith to condemn Warren’s action, there would have been no confusion as to how the message actually read, and Chief Inspector Swanson would never have reported to the Home Office, as he did on 6 November, that ‘to those police officers who saw the chalk writing, the handwriting of the now notorious letters to a newspaper agency bears no resemblance at all.’

Among the letters Dutton decided were genuine was one said to have been posted in Liverpool. The earliest known text of this letter, in J. Hall Richardson’s
From the City to Fleet Street
(1927), is as follows:

“29th inst.

BEWARE I shall be at work on the 1st and 2nd inst. in ‘Minories’ at 12 midnight and I give the authorities a good chance but there is never a Policeman near when I am at work.

Yours,

JACK THE RIPPER.

Prince William St., L’pool.

What fools the police are I even give them the name of the street where I am living.

Yours,

JACK THE RIPPER.”

It is instructive to compare this version with McCormick’s, supposedly
drawn from Dutton. McCormick prints the letter and its postscript as two separate letters and dates the first 29 September. This date is implausible. At that time the only use of the name Jack the Ripper had been in the letter of 25 September to the Central News and this had not yet been released to the press. Richardson’s date, indicating that the Liverpool letter could have been written on 29 October or in any succeeding month during the Ripper scare, is, on the other hand, entirely credible. Dutton apparently claimed to have seen the original but he could just as easily have cribbed the letter from Richardson. Wherever he got it from, one wonders why he falsified the date. Was it simply a transcription error? Or did the good doctor seek to invest the letter with a bogus authenticity by implying that it carried a forewarning of the double murder of 30 September?

Details like this destroy Dutton’s credibility. If McCormick has drawn accurately upon the diaries, and without the original manuscripts we cannot be certain of it, then only one conclusion is possible – the doctor was a charlatan.

For Dutton’s various statements on the letters, see McCormick,
Identity of Jack the Ripper
, revised edition, 1970, espec. pp. 99, 103–5, 111. The other references are: Mann, ‘The Ripper and the Poet’, p. 15 n. 9; reports of Sir Charles Warren and Chief Inspector Swanson, 6 November 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C/8c; Smith,
From Constable to Commissioner
, pp. 153, 162; Richardson,
From the City to Fleet Street
, p. 219. There is no trace of the Liverpool letter in the Scotland Yard collection of Ripper communications at MEPO 3/142.