Complete History of Jack the Ripper Read online

  The Complete History of Jack the Ripper

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in hardback by Robinson Publishing Ltd 1994

  Paperback edition published by Robinson Publishing Ltd 1995

  This revised paperback edition published by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2002

  Copyright © Philip Sugden 1994, 1995, 2002, 2006

  The right of Philip Sugden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 1-84119-397-6

  ISBN 978-1-84119-397-7

  eISBN 978-1-78033-709-8

  10 9 8 7

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1 A Century of Final Solutions

  2 Mysterious Murder in George Yard

  3 Without the Slightest Shadow of a Trace

  4 Leather Apron

  5 Dark Annie

  6 The Man in the Passage and other Chapman Murder Myths

  7 The Panic and the Police

  8 The King of Elthorne Road

  9 Double Event

  10 Long Liz

  11 False Leads

  12 ‘Don’t Fear for Me!’

  13 Letters from Hell

  14 In the Shadow of the Ripper

  15 ‘I want to go to the Lord Mayor’s Show’

  16 ‘Oh! Murder!’

  17 The End of the Terror

  18 Murderer of Strangers

  19 Found in the Thames: Montague John Druitt

  20 Caged in an Asylum: Aaron Kosminski

  21 The Mad Russian: Michael Ostrog

  22 ‘You’ve got Jack the Ripper at last!’: George Chapman

  Last Thoughts

  Sources

  Notes

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  During the research and writing of this book I have had the help of many people and it is a great pleasure to be able to thank them.

  I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the following persons for according me facilities to study, replying to my inquiries or granting me access to archives: the staff of the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane and Kew; Miss J. Coburn, Head Archivist, and her staff at the Greater London Record Office and Library; Mr James R. Sewell, City Archivist, and his staff at the Corporation of London Records Office; the staffs of the British Library, Bloomsbury, and the British Newspaper Library, Colindale; the staff of the Guildhall Library; Miss K. Shawcross, City of Westminster Archives and Local Studies, Victoria Library; Richard Knight, Local Studies Library, Holborn Library; Paul Burns, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland; Myrtle V. Cooper, Metropolitan Police Archives Department; Miss Rhoda Edwards, St Olave’s and St Saviour’s Grammar School Foundation; Mr P. R. Evans and Mrs J. V. Thorpe, Gloucestershire Record Office; Michael Farrar, County Archivist, Cambridgeshire Record Office; Robin Gillis, Metropolitan Police Musuem; Stephen Humphrey, Southwark Local Studies Library; David A. Leitch, Curatorial Officer, Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts; C. J. Lloyd, Local History Librarian, Globe Town Neighbourhood, Bancroft Road Library; Keith A. Miller, Executive Administrator, World Association of Document Examiners, Chicago, USA; Michael Page, Surrey Record Office; Mark Purcell, Senior Library Assistant, Bodleian Library; Miss G. Sheldrick, Hertfordshire County Record Office; Miss J. G. A. Sheppard, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine; Mr Jonathan Evans, Archivist, Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum; Mr Maurice D. Jeffery, formerly Administrator, Friern Hospital; Mr H. P. Dulley, Trust Project Manager, Horizon NHS Trust; Miss J. M. Smyth, General Services Manager, and Mr Bernard Cousens, Fire Prevention Officer, Springfield Hospital.

  Even within a field as notorious for its cranks and charlatans as Ripper research there are knowledgeable and responsible students dedicated to the pursuit of truth. I am particularly indebted to four of the latter: Nick Warren, for guidance on the medical aspects of the case; Jon Ogan, for innumerable suggestions and especially for information on criminal psychological profiling; Stewart Evans, for dispelling my confusion as to the site of George Yard Buildings and for information on the Littlechild letter; and Keith Skinner, for generously agreeing to read my extracts from the Aberconway notes.

  Extracts from Crown Copyright records in the Public Record Office and the Corporation of London Records Office appear by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Material from Gloucestershire Quarter Sessions records in the Gloucestershire Record Office appears by permission of Mr David J. H. Smith, the County and Diocesan Archivist.

  I am grateful for this opportunity to express my thanks to Nick Robinson, my publisher, and to Jan Chamier and Eryl Humphrey Jones at Robinson Publishing, for their patience and understanding and for their expertise in steering this project through its various stages of production. To my editor, Tim Haydock, I owe a special debt of gratitude. Tim’s impressive knowledge of the Whitechapel murders and boundless enthusiasm for this book were most formidable factors in sustaining me over the last mile. I also wish to thank Richard Corfield, Sue Aldridge and Mick Wolf at Oxford Illustrators Ltd, for their preparation of the maps.

  Thanks are long overdue to my friend Derek Barlow, formerly of the Public Record Office, for his generosity, encouragement and support over many years. My greatest debt, finally, is to my brother, Dr John Sugden of Coventry, who unstintingly spared time from his own research projects to discuss or assist this one and who, ten years ago, first insisted that I write this book.

  Philip Sugden

  Hull, England, 1994

  Picture credits: 1, 4–5, 7–8, 13, 16–17, Public Record Office, MEPO 3/140 and MEPO 3/3155; 3, 6, 9, 22, 24, Greater London Photograph Library; 2, 19, British Library; 11, 14–15, 18, British Newspaper Library; 10, Royal London Hospital Museum and Archives; 12, Metropolitan Police Museum; 21, Hull City Museums and Art Galleries.

  Since the first printing of this book a great many people have assisted me with information and advice and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their time and generosity. In addition to those acknowledged above I am particularly indebted to Martin Fido, Sue Iremonger of Documents in Dispute Ltd, Professor Graham Davies of the University of Leicester, Richard Morgan at the Glamorgan Record Office, and Ron Bernard. Many thanks, too, to Mark Crean, Editorial Director at Robinson Publishing, for his kindness and efficiency in preparing this updated edition for the press.

  Philip Sugden,

  January 1995

  I would like to express my gratitude to the following people for their kindness and assistance: Neal Shelden; Nick Warren; Nick Connell; Melvin Harris; Paul Gainey; Dr Harold Smyth; Dr Catherine Greensmith, University of Hull; Mrs J. E. Goode; Christine Nougaret, Archives de France; Geneviève Madore, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris; Jean-Jacques Thiefine, Archives de la Préfecture de Police; Francoise Banat-Berger, Archives du Ministère de la Justice; Loretta Lay; Jan Chamier, Sarah Smith and Krystyna Green, Constable & Robinson Ltd; and the staffs of the Public Record Office, London Metropolitan Archives, the British
Newspaper Library, the Archives Départementales de Paris, the Brynmor Jones Library (University of Hull) and the Kingston upon Hull Central Reference Library. I owe a special debt to Stewart Evans, for suggesting some corrections to the text, for his generosity with knowledge and resources, and, most of all, for his unfailing friendship and encouragement.

  Philip Sugden,

  April 2001

  Introduction

  INTEREST IN THE Jack the Ripper murders is probably greater today than at any time since the killer himself actually stalked the streets of London’s East End. In recent years we have been all but deluged in a swelling tide of books, articles, films, plays and comics inspired by the case, and aficionados can now debate their theories and exchange views via Internet sites, at annual conferences and in the columns of specialist magazines (the latest of no less than five devoted to the murders was launched in Australia in 2000).

  Inevitably, perhaps, this vast outpouring of Ripperana has produced a great deal more heat than light. Partly this is because the archival sources, thoroughly explored in this book eight years ago, have now been picked over many times. Partly, too, it reflects the commercial potential of anything to do with the Ripper, which continually spawns catchpenny solutions to the mystery, badly researched, ill-considered, and, in the worst cases, flagrantly dishonest. The modern Ripperologist has nothing to learn from Munchhausen and de Rougemont.

  It is now unlikely that any really significant discoveries await us. Nevertheless, digging in the same field as the cranks and charlatans I have spoken of are growing numbers of genuine and dedicated researchers, and their efforts to unearth fresh gems of knowledge continue to shed new light on aspects of this century-old story.1

  Take the case of Emma Smith. Her murder was the first in the series that became known as the Jack the Ripper or Whitechapel murders. First crimes in a series are interesting. They can sometimes reveal more than any of the others because they are likely to be less well-planned. However, when I attempted to research Emma’s murder my efforts were quickly frustrated by the loss of records. There were press reports of the inquest, of course, and at the Royal London Hospital, where Emma died, I found the record of her admission. But after that it was one dead end after another. At the Public Record Office I learned that Emma’s file had disappeared from the Metropolitan Police case papers at some time before 1983, and at what was then the Greater London Record Office (now London Metropolitan Archives) that no relevant coroner’s papers for the old Eastern District of Middlesex survived. A ray of hope invigorated my efforts when I discovered that Coroner Wynne Baxter had sent a copy of his inquest papers to the Public Prosecutor, but it was soon extinguished. All that remains today in the records of the Director of Public Prosecutions is a single line entry in a register of cases. In the comments column is the cryptic remark: ‘no one in custody’.2 And that, I thought, was that.

  I am delighted to say I was wrong. After the Complete History was published I learned that notes made from the Metropolitan Police file, before it was lost, still exist in papers owned by the noted true crime author Richard Whittington-Egan. These notes, taken by Ian Sharp, a research assistant who worked on the 1973 BBC television series about the Ripper, do not add a great deal to what we already know about Emma Smith, but the little they do tell us is immensely interesting.3

  In his 1938 reminiscences Ex-Chief Inspector Walter Dew wrote that Emma was found unconscious in the street by a man who immediately summoned the police. Detectives waited by her bedside, he related, but she died ‘without regaining consciousness’.4 The true story, as I reconstructed it from press notices of the inquest, was very different, and Sharp’s notes confirm that Dew’s account was indeed largely fictitious.

  Emma was attacked on the pathway opposite 10 Brick Lane but she was not left unconscious. Far from it, she walked about three hundred yards from there to her lodgings and then, in company with Mary Russell, the deputy at the lodging house, and Annie Lee, another lodger, something like another half mile to the London Hospital. And she spoke of the attack, both to Mary Russell and to George Haslip, the surgeon who attended her. For their part the police knew nothing whatever about the incident until two days after Emma’s death, when the coroner’s officer notified them that there was to be an inquest. Not one of the constables on duty at the time of the attack had seen or heard anything of it.

  Sharp’s notes also tell us a little more about Emma herself. About forty-five, with a son and daughter living in the Finsbury Park area, she was five feet two inches in height, had a fair complexion and light brown hair, and bore a scar on her right temple.5

  Although the slaying of Emma Smith was the first of the Whitechapel murders we cannot be certain how many of these crimes were committed by the man we call Jack the Ripper. My study of the evidence in Emma’s case quickly persuaded me that she had not, in fact, been a Ripper victim. Emma was attacked by three men, and although she subsequently died of her injuries murder does not seem to have been intended. Emma herself was evidently of this opinion. Chief Inspector West’s report, as rendered for us by Ian Sharp, carries the information: ‘According to deceased’s statements the motive was robbery’. Which leaves Martha Tabram or Polly Nichols as the Ripper’s first probable murder victim.

  Modern research has concerned itself primarily with the problem of the Ripper’s identity. This book explored contemporary police suspects, especially those accused by senior officers – Montague Druitt (accused by Macnaghten), Aaron Kosminski (Anderson), Michael Ostrog (Macnaghten again) and George Chapman (Abberline). To these names we would now have to add Francis Tumblety (Littlechild), about whom more presently. My conclusions were that there was no consensus of view within the police about the identity of the killer, that different officers held to different theories, and that a serious case did not exist against any of their candidates. The evidence that has come to light since the book was written has strengthened rather than weakened these convictions.

  As the only major suspect against whom any direct evidence was alleged Kosminski is of considerable interest. Fundamentally the case against him stands on two legs, one an identification by a witness, the other the reminiscences of Sir Robert Anderson, neither sufficient to support so weighty an accusation.

  In the light of the evidence we have the witness can only have been Joseph Lawende, the commercial traveller who saw a man thought to have been the Ripper on the night of the Mitre Square murder. Sir Robert clearly came to believe that his identification of Kosminski as the same man was conclusive. But we know a great deal more about this kind of evidence now than he did then.

  After the Devlin Report of 1976 the Home Office commissioned psychologists John Shepherd, Hadyn Ellis and Graham Davies at Aberdeen University to study the impact of long delays on the accuracy of identification evidence. The results were revealing. For the purposes of one experiment, for example, people drawn from the local non-university population were invited to the psychology department to carry out a series of paper and pencil tests. In the midst of these proceedings a young man barged his way into the room. He read out a car registration number and hotly demanded to know whether the owner was present. The car, he claimed, had scratched his own vehicle and was now blocking his exit from the car park. Walking up and down the centre aisle, the man repeated the number and looked threateningly at each row of people in turn. Then, after about forty-five seconds, he was hustled from the room by the lecturer. The incident had been staged. And different groups of witnesses were recalled at intervals of between one week and eleven months to see if they could pick the irate motorist out from an identification parade. Even under conditions of minimum delay they performed relatively poorly and there was a significant decline in performance over time. Misidentifications remained constant at about 15–20% but recognition rates fell from 65% at one week to only 10% or chance at eleven months. In short, after eleven months more witnesses were picking out the wrong man than recognizing the right one! The witnesses were all advis
ed to select a man only if they were quite certain that he was the motorist, and the most noticeable feature of the results at eleven months was the large number of them (75%) who declined to make any identification at all. When those who had so declined were then asked to pick out the man ‘most resembling’ the motorist, 87% of them opted for the wrong man, a finding which suggests that the principal result of pressure would have been to greatly increase the number of misidentifications.6

  In the light of this and similar experiments it should be clear why we have to discount Lawende. He saw the Ripper fleetingly and in a dark street, and he had no reason at the time to take particular note of his appearance. Indeed, he reposed so little confidence in his sighting that within a fortnight of it he had told the Eddowes inquest that he did not think he would be able to recognize the man again. But at that time, still more than a decade before the Adolf Beck case focused attention on problems of mistaken identity, the police were very inexperienced in the use of identification evidence, and they sought to exploit Lawende’s sighting long after it had ceased to be of practical significance. Lawende seems to have been asked to identify Kosminski about two years after his original sighting. And the police had still not finished with him. They asked him to turn out again in 1891, more than two years after the event, and again, apparently, in 1895, more than six, to see if he could identify other suspects. Given the drastic decline in the accuracy of identifications within just eleven months of the sighting demonstrated in modern experiments all of these exercises appear to have been quite futile.

  The credibility of the case against Kosminski rests also upon that of Anderson. Although we now know that Anderson believed in Kosminski’s guilt, at least as a ‘perfectly plausible theory’, as early as 18957, it was in 1910, when he published his memoirs, that he first entered into detail. Unfortunately his account contains errors both of fact and interpretation. This should not surprise anyone for the same is true of virtually all reminiscent accounts. In Sir Robert’s case we have no reason to suppose that he was being intentionally dishonest. But he does not seem to have been very interested in the Ripper case and I took the view in my book that his memories became vague and muddled over the years and that, moreover, he began to interpret them in ways that pandered to his own not inconsiderable sense of self-importance.