Jack the Ripper: The Secret Police Files (44 page)

In concluding it’s strange that it seems that some of the more recent enquires into the case keeps bringing us back to the Fenians. On a final note in a book titled “
The Rise of Scotland Yard”
written by Douglas Browne. There is an entry in the book whereby Browne states from documents he viewed, Sir Melville Macnaghten believed that Jack the Ripper was the leader of a plot to assassinate Arthur Balfour the Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1887/88. It’s a coincidence that Balfour was at one time instrumental in the imprisonment of O’Brien.

Macnaghten could not have been privy to all of this information at the time as he was not in office at that time. He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1889, so he must have read if from another source. Having regards to the discrepancies in his now much mentioned memorandum from 1894, extreme caution should be heeded when assessing the truthfulness and accuracy of anything Macnaghten was associated with.

One positive note to come out of the new disclosure and Littlechild’s entry is the fact he does not mention Tumblety despite suggesting in later years that he was his prime suspect. From what I have seen there does not appear to be any other Littlechild entries relating to the Whitechapel murders in the register. On that basis I would suggest serious consideration be given to removing Tumblety from any further suspicion of being involved in the murders.

In the interim period as a result of information provided to me by a third party I was led to believe that the register also contained another entry appertaining to the Whitechapel murders. This was a named entry under the name R. Churchill and the entry read, “
Perpetrator of The Whitechapel Murders”
. It was suggested to me that this entry could relate to Randolph Churchill the father of Sir Winston Churchill.

I knew that his name had been mentioned before in Ripper circles, and his name appears in a Ripper book titled “
The Celebrity Suspects”
written by Mike Holgate.

Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill was born 13th February 1849 which would have made him 39 at the time of the murders. He was born to be a politician representing several constituencies in the House of Commons between 1874 and 1885.

Under Prime Minister Lord Salisbury he then became secretary of state for India a post which lasted 12 months. He was then appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. An appointment Queen Victoria opposed describing him as, “
So mad and odd”
.

Throughout his political career he was disliked and made many enemies even among his own close associates describing him as, “
rude and offensive”
. He had a reputation for being a good orator in the House of Commons and the cry would go out, “
Randy's up”
, and the chamber would quickly fill. His speeches were described as often controversial, but always brilliant.

He resigned as Chancellor in 1886, thinking his resignation would not be accepted by Lord Salisbury, it was, and he spent the last eight years of his life in the political wilderness. He remained in the House of Commons but seemed a spent force; somehow his speeches had lost their effectiveness.

He later contracted syphilis where and when it is not known, however this brought on general paralysis and he died on January 24th 1895 at the age of 45.

Churchill’s modern-day link to Jack the Ripper revolves around him supposedly being the highest Freemason in the country and was therefore part of what is described by several modern-day authors as the Royal Conspiracy, which I have previously documented. Despite what the authors suggest they have not been able to prove Churchill was ever connected to the masons. However, given his high government positions over the years I would suggest that he probably was a mason.

Churchill is also said to fit the detailed description given by the witness George Hutchinson of a man seen with Mary Kelly shortly before she was murdered. The Pall Mall Gazette June 28th 1884 described Churchill as, “
Of average height with a wide turned up moustache, beautifully dressed, his gold chain has the solid appearance of real 18 carat”
.

Churchill was a high profile member of society in 1888. He would have been easily recognizable and I doubt for one minute would have risked walking the streets of Whitechapel. If there were any truth as to his involvement then it would have been in a non-active capacity. I personally have never subscribed to the Royal Conspiracy theory, or any suggestion that the murders were the work of the Freemasons.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE POLICE OFFICIALS IN LATER YEARS

For 125 years Ripper researchers and the general public at large have subscribed to the theory that the police did in fact know the identity of the killer, I do not agree and have set out below the details and quotes made by senior police officers involved in the investigation at varying times after the murders ceased which corroborate my belief:

October 23rd 1888

Sir Robert Anderson, Ass. Comm, Met Police said:

“But that five successive murders should have been committed, without our having the slightest clue of any kind is extraordinary, if not unique, in the annals of crime.”

November 4th 1889

Sir Robert Anderson in the Pall Mall Gazette in an interview with American journalist:

“Our
failure to find Jack the Ripper as they call him.”

This is the same Sir Robert Anderson who in his book published in 1910 and up until that time had stated on many occasions he knew the identity of the Ripper but didn’t name him.

November 1890

James Monro following his resignation as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, November 1890 stated:

“The police had nothing positive in the way of clues about the identity of the Ripper.”

February 15th 1891

Significantly, in the Lloyds Weekly News of February 15th 1891, Sir Edward Bradford, by this time, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, felt convinced from evidence of previous murders in Whitechapel that the murdered woman (Coles) was a victim of the same killer responsible for the Ripper murders two years previously.

If there had already been a previous positive identification (Kosminski), why would Bradford, who would surely have known about it, have thought the Ripper to be still at large?

In 1891, after the murder of Frances Coles on 13th February that year, the police believed that they had found the Ripper in Thomas Sadler. However, he was found not to be Coles’ killer, and he faded into obscurity. At this time the Ripper still had not been found.

May 1892

In Cassell’s Saturday Journal Chief Inspector Abberline is quoted:

“Theories! We were lost almost in theories; there were so many of them.”

June 1892

Sir Robert Anderson in Cassell's Saturday Journal, 1892 stated:

“The mention of this appalling sequence of still undiscovered crimes.”

February 1893

Eastern Post and Daily Chronicle, Superintendent Thomas Arnold said:

“We had some of the finest men from all parts of London, but all their efforts were useless.”

May 1895

In 1895 following a non-fatal attack on another prostitute in Whitechapel the police arrested a William Grant Grainger. The police including Swanson believed that Grainger was the Ripper. Nothing was found to connect him with being Jack the Ripper. This clearly shows that the police were still trying to find Jack the Ripper and had no clues as to his identity even as late as 1895.

At that time Swanson who led the Ripper investigation when interviewed by the Pall Mall Gazette at this time however stated:

“The Whitechapel Murders were the work of a man who is now dead.”

So this in itself must eliminate Aaron Kosminski as he was institutionalized at that time and he didn’t die until 1919.

March 1903

Chief Inspector Abberline now retired and living in Bournemouth said to the Pall Mall Gazette:

“We have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead, or that he was a lunatic, or anything of that kind.”

September 1908

Speaking retrospectively to the Daily Chronicle Sir Robert Anderson said:

“I
told Sir William Harcourt that I could not accept the responsibility for the non-detection of the author of the Ripper crimes.”

April 23rd 1910

Detective Inspector Reid speaking in Lloyds Weekly:

“ Now we have Sir Robert Anderson saying that Jack the Ripper was a Jew, that I challenge him to prove, and what is more it was never suggested at the time of the murders. I challenge anyone to prove that there was a tittle of evidence against man, woman or child in connection with the murders, as no man was ever seen in the company of the women who were found dead.”

February 4th 1912

Detective Inspector Reid speaking again in Lloyds Weekly:

“I challenge anyone to produce a tittle of evidence of any kind against anyone. The earth has been raked over, and the seas have been swept, to find this criminal 'Jack the Ripper’, always without success. It still amuses me to read the writings of such men as Dr. Anderson, Dr. Forbes Winslow, Major Arthur. Griffiths, and many others, all holding different theories, but all of them wrong. I have answered many of them in print, and would only add here that I was on the scene and ought to know.”

1914

Sir Melville Macnaghten author of the now questionable Macnaghten Memorandum written in 1894, wrote in his 1914 book titled “
Days of my years”
:

“No light was vouchsafed to us, and after two or three weeks it seemed as if the Muswell Hill murder was going to climb on the shelf of undiscovered crimes alongside Jack the Ripper and the Cafe Royal case of eighteen months before.”

Unless every single comment made by all the above high-ranking police officers who were all actively involved in the investigation is a lie, (Anderson, Abberline, Swanson, Monro, Moore, and Reid) no person was known to have committed the Whitechapel murders, or for that matter no one was ever regarded as a prime suspect, and all of the murders remain to this day unsolved.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

125TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR

2013 would be the 125
^th
anniversary of the Whitechapel murders, the year perhaps when the final pieces of the jigsaw would emerge. Would Ripper researchers who have perhaps been sitting on important documents all of these years finally decided to release them into the public domain? Were there even any important documents still in existence, which had previously not seen the light of day?

At the conclusion of my long and protracted cold case reinvestigation into this mystery, the results of which in my opinion have now dispelled many of the previously accepted facts surrounding this mystery, and to commemorate the 125
^th
anniversary I decided to put together a two hour one-man theatre show titled, “
Jack the Ripper - A 21
^st
Century Investigation”
.

This would be the opportunity for me to travel the length and the breadth of the country disclosing the results of my investigation to the many people still fascinated by this mystery. The format was simple, by means of Microsoft PowerPoint I put together an audio visual show, which contained 120 slides consisting of photographs of the victims, and suspects, as well as the more recent photographs taken when carrying out the mortuary tests to prove or disprove the organ removal theory.

With the help of a concert promoter Johnny Mans we were able to secure 70 theatre dates which in itself showed that theatre managers were prepared to stage a show in total contrast to the normal theatre shows of music and comedy.

Overall the show was well received. In my introduction at the beginning of this book I stated that the public had been misled by the total distortion of the facts by the press and media over the years. That soon became apparent with my nightly questions to the audience. The first being how they perceived Jack the Ripper to have looked in 1888? At this point I would show the audience a picture of a man in a tall black hat, wearing a long black cape and carrying a black bag. A picture which has appeared on many Ripper books and has also featured in many Ripper documentaries, an image falsely created as someone dressed in that way would certainly not have been trawling the backstreets of Whitechapel at four in the morning. Almost every night at least 50% of the audience put their hands up in the belief that this was how they perceived the killer to have looked.

Another nightly audience survey revolved around suspects. Each night I would ask the audience to reveal to me the names of their preferred suspects. The first thing I noticed was that night after night the same names were put forward, these being Francis Tumblety, Aaron Kosminski, the Royal Prince, Sir William Gull, Walter Sickert, George Chapman.

All of these have been the subject of many television documentaries and recently published books. My follow-on question to the audience related to how they had come to suspect these various suspect’s names that they were suggesting. Each person answered in the same way, as a result of a television documentary or as a result of what they had read.

Another interesting survey during the show was to try to find out how deep the public had really gone into studying this mystery themselves, or was their knowledge gained simply from television documentaries or reading books. In an attempt to answer this when discussing the apron piece and the suggestion that the killer cut or tore this from the apron Eddowes was wearing I asked how many believed this explanation.

The results of this night after night were staggering only one or two members of each nightly audience agreed with this explanation. The results of a follow-up question confirmed that the public had generally not researched this part of the mystery in any great detail. It should be noted that hardly any of the television documentaries have expanded upon this issue. So again it goes to show that although the general public has a passing interest in this mystery in my opinion they still have been misled by what they have seen and read.