Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files (14 page)

The documents in question show that on August 8th, a letter from the Prince of Wales records that Prince Albert Victor was laid up in York with gout. At the time he was stationed there with his regiment the 10
^th
Lancers. So therefore could not have been involved in the murder of Martha Tabram.

Between August 31st and September 7th, he was staying with Viscount Downe at Danby Lodge, Grosmont, Yorkshire. So he could not have been involved in the murder of Polly Nichols on August 31st.

Between September 7th and 10th the Prince was at the cavalry barracks in York, so he could not have been involved in the murder of Annie Chapman on the 8th
^th
September.

Between September 27th – 30th the Prince was at Abergeldie, Scotland, where Queen Victoria recorded in her journal that he lunched with her on 30th September. (Stride and Eddowes were murdered between 1.00 and 2.00 am, 30th September.)

Between November 2nd and November 12th the Prince was at Sandringham. (Kelly was found murdered November 9th.)

On July 17th 1889 when Alice McKenzie was murdered the Prince wrote in a letter to his brother dated 21st July that he was again in York.

On February 13th 1891 when Frances Coles was murdered, it is documented that the Prince lunched at Marlborough House en route from Osborne to York.

In any event, can we honestly be expected to believe than any member of the royal family, let alone an heir to the throne, would be left to his own devices to come and go as he pleased in the East End of London and be allowed to set up a home and to live as a normal person? I think not.

The other issue with the Prince is the suggestion that he was a homosexual. If this were the case, then this is another aspect which makes the story unbelievable. He died in 1891, supposedly of pneumonia; some say it was syphilis.

I have also looked at the suggestion put forward with regards to Sir William Gull, the Queen’s physician being involved and the murders being committed in the royal carriage. I can easily discount this suggestion outright. Firstly, I only have to look at the reports from the doctors who examined the victims at the murder scenes. They all clearly state that the victims were killed where they were found.

If they had been killed in a carriage the bodies could have been dumped anywhere in an isolated place, not in locations where they were likely to have been seen being dumped. It should also be noted that in the case of several of the locations it would have been impossible to drive a carriage to the locations where the bodies were found in any event.

At the time of the murders Sir William Gull was 72 and had suffered a stroke, he could hardly walk. He would have been incapable of murdering anyone, let alone carrying out mutilations. He died of another stroke in 1890.

Is there any other form of evidence to support this story of Joseph Sickert? The answer is no. What motive did Joseph Sickert have for coming forward with this story? The answer is none, other than possibly for financial gain from the press and television. Joseph Sickert later retracted his account after a great deal of pressure was put on him from undisclosed sources.

The problem with the Whitechapel murders and the worldwide interest they still generate is that there is always someone going to appear out of the woodwork with another suspect or another theory. All of which seem to have no substance to them and no form of corroboration. But because the public worldwide are still, to this day, interested in these crimes and are desperate for new facts and evidence to emerge, which may finally identify Jack the Ripper, as a result the press and media will follow-up new revelations and heavily publicize it.

FRANCIS TUMBLETY

Francis Tumblety, aged 54, an American living in London in 1888, was said to have frequented Whitechapel at the time of the murders. Although described in many US press reports as a doctor or physician, there is no evidence he had any formal medical training or held any medical qualifications, and there’s little to suggest he was anything more than a quack who sold potions, pills and creams for a wide variety of ailments.

Tumblety as a Ripper suspect was named by a Scotland Yard police officer serving at the time of the Whitechapel murders in a private letter written twenty-five years later, which was obtained in the early 1990s by Ripper expert, Stewart Evans.

At the time of the murders, John George Littlechild was a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard, in charge of what was variously known as Special Branch, the Secret Department or Section “D”. It was also referred to as the “Special Confidential Section”, the “Special (Secret) Branch”, and the “Home Office, Crime Department, Special Branch”.

His letter, dated 23rd September 1913, was in reply to journalist George R. Sims, a keen Ripper-watcher and commentator.

Here is the relevant section:

“I never heard of a Dr. D. in connection with the Whitechapel murders but amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one, was a Dr. T. (which sounds much like D.). He was an American quack named Tumblety and was at one time a frequent visitor to London and on these occasions constantly brought under the notice of police, there being a large dossier concerning him at Scotland Yard. Although a 'Psychopathia Sexualis' subject he was not known as a 'Sadist' (which the murderer unquestionably was) but his feelings toward women were remarkable and bitter in the extreme, a fact on record. Tumblety was arrested at the time of the murders in connection with unnatural offences and charged at Marlborough Street, remanded on bail, jumped his bail, and got away to Boulogne. He shortly left Boulogne and was never heard of afterwards. It was believed he committed suicide but certain it is that from this time the 'Ripper' murders came to an end.”

“Psychopathia Sexualis”
as referred to in the letter was an early forensic reference book for psychiatrists, physicians, and judges written by Richard Von Krafft-Ebbing and first published in 1886. Ebbing set out to discourage lay readers, deliberately choosing a scientific term for the title of the book and writing parts of it in Latin. The book was one of the first to be written about sexual practices, including homosexuality, and proposed consideration of the mental state of sex criminals in legal judgments of their crimes. During its time, it became the leading medico-legal textual authority on sexual pathology.

Since its discovery this letter has been the foundation of Tumblety’s viability as a Ripper suspect but it has not stood up to close scrutiny. Littlechild in the letter states that Tumblety was believed to have committed suicide. This is not correct; Tumblety lived until 1903 when he died of natural causes. Littlechild also states that after Tumblety fled the country the murders ceased. This is also not totally correct as previously stated the later murders of Frances Coles 1891 and Alice McKenzie 1889 were looked upon by the police as possible Ripper murders. The large dossier referred to by Littlechild may well have been the file of evidence regarding Tumblety’s court case. If one carefully reads the letter it is clear that Littlechild is merely giving nothing more than an opinion as to Tumblety’s viability as a likely Ripper suspect. There are no other official references, which corroborate Littlechild’s opinion. Opinions do not equate to a person being categorized as a prime suspect.

It should be noted that James Monro, who was in overall charge of Special Branch and superior in rank to Littlechild, makes no mention of the Ripper case or of Tumblety in his unpublished 1903 memoirs. Furthermore, with regard to Macnaghten's memorandum, none of his three named “more likely” suspects are Francis Tumblety.

Tumblety was arrested on 7th November on misdemeanour charges of gross indecency with, and indecent assaults upon, four named males.

To qualify as Jack the Ripper any suspect has to have been responsible for all the murders attributed to the killer including the murder of Mary Kelly which occurred in the early hours of Friday 9th November 1888 — two days after Tumblety's arrest — and the question is whether or not Tumblety could have been free on bail at this time in order to have committed the Kelly murder?

The information in trying to answer that question is limited. From the Old Bailey court calendar for November 1888 we know as a documented fact that Tumblety was taken into custody on [Wednesday] 7th November 1888. This document also tells us that a week later, on [Wednesday] 14th November, he was committed for trial by J. L. Hannay, a magistrate at Marlborough Street Police Court, and on [Friday] 16th November granted bail.

Various US newspapers reported Tumblety's 1888 bail as $1,500 [£300] — the present-day equivalent at current exchange rates of $36,440 [£23,390] — but as yet no documents have come to light to substantiate these figures or identify his sureties.

On the basis of the information contained in the November court calendar we therefore have to account for the whereabouts of Francis Tumblety during the crucial period between 7th and 14th November 1888. Could he have been free on bail between those dates? To answer this we must first look at the circumstances which led to Tumblety's arrest.

The details of Tumblety's eight offences [four for gross indecency, and four for indecent assault] together with the names of the victims were given on the indictment as Friday 27th July [Albert Fisher], Friday 31st August [Arthur Brice], Sunday 14th October [James Crowley] and Friday 2nd November [John Doughty]. It is not known the ages of the men however if they were young males (rent boys) this would have been an aggravating feature of the offences.

From this it appears that during the four-month period leading up to Tumblety's arrest the police had been conducting an investigation into his activities in the West End of London, the area over which Marlborough Street Police Court held jurisdiction.

The last of Tumblety's offences was shown as 2nd November. As he was not arrested [taken into custody] until 7th November it is apparent that he was not arrested whilst actually committing an offence. Had this been the case, a further offence dated 7th November would have appeared on the indictment.

Gross indecency was outlined in Section 11 of The Criminal Amendment Act 1885:“
Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.”

The act gave no specific definition of gross indecency, as Victorian morality demurred from precise descriptions of activities held to be immoral. In practice, this law was broadly used to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy (buggery, anal intercourse, which was a felony) could not be proven.

Most famously, Oscar Wilde in 1895 was convicted under section 11 and sentenced to the maximum 2 years penal servitude (hard labour). The trial judge in that case deemed that maximum sentence which he was permitted by law to pass was totally unacceptable; suggesting that he would have imposed a longer sentence had the legislation allowed him to do so.

A misdemeanour should not be construed as necessarily less serious than a felony. Russell's “A Treatise on Crimes and Misdemeanours” [fifth edition], 1877: “
a misdemeanour is said to be a name generally applied to offences for which the law has not provided a particular name. But so many crimes have been created. Misdemeanours by statute which do not differ in character from felonies, that no distinction founded on the nature of the crime can be drawn between them. Nor can they be distinguished by the greater or less severity of the punishment, for some misdemeanours are punished more severely than felonies."

It should also be noted that although the type of sexual offences Tumblety was arrested for were classified as misdemeanours, which are a separate classification to that of the more serious felony, many offences however of a similar nature bore a thin line between a felony and a misdemeanour i.e. if a person steals apples from and orchard it is a theft and classed as a misdemeanour. If however a person steals apples from a basket outside a shop it would still be theft but would be classed as a felony. All distinctions between a felony and a misdemeanour were abolished in the UK in 1967.

Misdemeanours relating to serious sexual cases were indictable only. They could not be dealt with by magistrates, who in 1888, as today, had only limited sentencing powers. Such offences were tried at the Central Criminal Court.

The evidence the police would have sought to rely on in the case against Tumblety would have consisted of evidence in written statement form from the victims and any other witnesses, as well as evidence in written statement form from the two named policemen in the case “PS Frank Froest CID” and “PS Walter Dinnie CID”. Their evidence may also have included evidence obtained from surveillance, an undercover operation, or both.

A close examination of police and court procedures of the day demonstrates two ways in which Tumblety could have been arrested in connection with these sexual offences, the first being an arrest without warrant.

The offences for which Tumblety was arrested were classed as misdemeanours, and arrests without a warrant for misdemeanour offences could only be made if [a] a statute gave a specific power of arrest for a particular offence, [b] a breach of the peace was actually taking place, or [c] an offence was about to take place and an arrest was necessary in order to prevent it.

In 1888 there were specific guidelines for dealing with persons arrested without a warrant for any offence and taken to a police station.

The Metropolitan Police Act 1839, Section 69:

“Every person taken into custody by any constable belonging to the Metropolitan Police, without warrant, except persons detained for the mere purpose of ascertaining their name or residence, shall be forthwith delivered into the custody of the Sgt or Inspector in charge of the nearest station-house in order that such person may be secured until he can be brought before a magistrate to be dealt with according to law, or may give bail for his appearance before a magistrate, if the Sgt or Inspector in charge shall deem it prudent to take bail in the manner hereinafter mentioned.”