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Jack the Ripper

The World’s most famous serial killer stalked the streets of Whitechapel, London in 1888
By David Cocksedge

FEW NAMES in history are as instantly recognizable as Jack the Ripper. The name invokes vivid images of Victorian London - noisy courts and alleys, gas lights and hansom cabs; swirling fog at night, prostitutes and criminals in a crowded and dangerous slum. And the silent, cape shrouded figure of death; a faceless prowler of the night armed with a long sharp knife and carrying a Gladstone bag.

More books have been written on “Jack” than all other serial killers combined. There are stories, songs, operas, movies and a never-ending stream of books published about this one Victorian criminal who was never caught. Why is this symbol of terror as popular today as he was in 1888 when he struck down five (or perhaps six) prostitutes in Whitechapel, a district of East London?

Because Jack the Ripper represents the classic “whodunit”. Not only is the case an enduring unsolved mystery that professional and amateur sleuths have tried to solve for over 116 years, but the story also has a terrifying, almost supernatural quality to it. The Ripper glides silently out of the fog, kills violently and quickly and then disappears without trace. He satisfies his blood lust with ever-increasing ferocity, culminating in the near destruction of his final victim, and then vanishes from London forever.

The East End of London in Victorian times was a place outcast from the city both economically and socially. Around 900,000 people lived in this teaming slum. Here cattle and sheep would be herded through the streets of Whitechapel to the slaughterhouses nearby where they were bludgeoned, bleating with fear and pain. The streets were stained with blood and excrement. Rubbish and liquid sewage gave the area a horrible stench. Most of the inhabitants lived in tenement houses under deplorable conditions. More than half of the children born in the East End died before the age of five. Of those who survived these mean streets, many were mentally and physically handicapped.

Prostitution was one of the only reliable means through which a single woman or widow could maintain herself in those days, in spite of Queen Victoria’s smug assertion that prostitution did not exist in England. London police (who did not indulge in self-delusion because they were faced with the facts) estimated that in 1888 there were some 1,200 “Ladies of the Night” plying their dangerous trade in Whitechapel alone.

The Russian progroms of the early 1880’s and expulsion of Poles from Prussia accounted for a wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe into London. Many of these were Jewish and settled in large numbers in Whitechapel because of the low rents. For the most part, this Jewish settlement had a very beneficial effect on the area by improving the sanitary conditions. Still, Whitechapel was still an area known for its poverty and crime; a “no go” area for respectable Londoners at night. In the squalor of crowded tenements, narrow darkened slum streets and alleys, the Whitechapel serial killer had a perfect place for his bloody work.

Ripper experts are divided as to the exact number of victims of the deranged killer who became to be known as “Jack the Ripper”. If the number is six, then the first to die was Martha Tabram, aged 39, on 6 August 1888. She was found murdered in George Yard, stabbed 39 times on “body, neck and private parts with a knife or dagger,” according to Dr Timothy Killeen’s post-mortem report. The time of death was estimated to be about 2.30am. As her throat had not been slashed in the same manner of the later victims, many have discounted Martha as the first Ripper victim. According to her fellow worker, Mary Ann Connelly, known as “Pearly Poll”, they had been together with two soldiers a few hours before Martha’s murder. Police took Poll to check out the two soldiers at the Tower Garrison, and they were cleared of the crime.

If the Ripper in fact killed five prostitutes, then the first was Mary Ann (“Polly”) Nichols, aged 42. She was discovered just before 4am on Friday 31 August in Buck’s Row, severely mutilated and all but decapitated. Her neck had been slashed twice, strokes which had cut through her windpipe and esophagus. She had been killed where she was found, even though there was little blood on the ground. Most of the blood had soaked into her clothing. Her abdomen exhibited a long, deep jagged knife wound, along with several other cuts from the same instrument running downward.

Polly had been the daughter of a locksmith and married William Nichols, a printer’s machinist. They had five children. But Polly had a severe drinking problem, and their marriage collapsed under it. She had been living off her meager earnings as a Whitechapel tart, and still had an insatiable desire for gin, the ruin of the working classes in Victorian times.

The inspector in charge of the investigation was a police veteran named Frederick George Abberline, who had been on the force for 25 years, most of them in the Whitechapel area, which was probably the toughest beat in the entire city. As we shall learn later in Part 2 (the suspects), Abberline came to form his own theory as to the identity of the Whitechapel killer.

At the time of Polly’s death, the inhabitants of London’s Whitechapel area had already heard about a number of attacks on prostitutes in the neighborhood. Whether or not one or more of these attacks was perpetrated by the man who later became known as Jack the Ripper is controversial, but to most people living in the slum, the crimes were linked.

A request was made to Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary, for a reward to be offered for the discovery of the savage murderer. But Mr. Matthews had no idea at this point what he was dealing with and declined to offer a reward, instead laying responsibility at the feet of the Metropolitan Police. In those days this force was operating almost completely in a knowledge vacuum with no modern forensic tools available. Fingerprinting, blood typing and other staples of forensic technique were not yet developed for police work in the detection of criminals. Even photography of victims was not a usual practice. There was no crime laboratory at London’s Scotland Yard until the 1930’s.

In 1888, the police were ignorant of sexual psychopaths. They had seen nothing like the Ripper crimes in England in their experience. And yet there was more horror to come.

The next Whitechapel whore to die violently was Annie Chapman, aged 47. Just after 6am on 8 September, her body was found quite close to her lodging house in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Yet, amazingly enough, even though the sun rose at 5.23am that morning, and so much traffic was present at that early hour, no one heard any suspicious disturbance or cries for help as “Dark Annie” as she was known, was brutally killed.

Dr George Bagster Phillips, veteran police surgeon, estimated that Annie Chapman had been dead approximately two hours, making the time of death around 4am. But witnesses had seen a very drunken Annie alive after 5am that morning, so this estimate is unreliable. The absence of any cry heard by residents of 29 Hanbury could be explained by the evidence that she was strangled into unconsciousness and then had her throat slashed with a very sharp knife. She had then been cut open and left with her intestines spilled out on the ground where she lay. Several vitals organs had been cut out and removed. Dr Phillips noted, “The throat was dissevered deeply. I noticed that the incision of the skin was jagged, and reached right round the neck.”

By the feet of the corpse, a small piece of cloth, a pocket comb and a small-tooth comb had been arranged neatly in order. The items all belonged to Dark Annie. Close by lay a leather apron such as those used by men working in Whitechapel's slaughterhouses. Coroner Wynne E Baxter agreed in his summation: “The body had not been dissected but the injuries have been made by someone who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge of the human body”. These were no meaningless cuts - as in the Tabram murder. Dr Phillips conjectured that the murder weapon was not a bayonet or the type of knife used by leather workers, but a narrow, thin knife with a blade between 6 and 8 inches long. He concluded, “The kind of knife used by slaughtermen and surgeons for amputations could have been such an instrument.”

Inspector Abberline was instructed to help with the Chapman murder in Spitalfields, a different jurisdiction. The lead inspector was Joseph Chandler of the Met. Police H Division. Both inspectors agreed that the man who killed Polly Nicholls had also killed Annie Chapman.

Newspapers did much to inflame the inherent fear and anger of the people of the East End, feeding on every rumor and story. Three savage murders left the normally busy streets of Whitechapel quiet by early evening and virtually deserted by night. In the blind fear-inspired rage of the locals, they looked for scapegoats and seized on the growing Jewish community as a target. A man named “Leather Apron” who savagely bullied local whores for cash, was known to be Jewish. He may even have been the murderer, they reasoned.

Some local merchants were quick to sense the growing anti-Semitic fever and took action to contain it. They formed the Mile End Vigilance Committee primarily composed of Jewish businessmen. This was probably the first organized “neighbourhood watch” in England rather than a vigilante group. Samuel Montagu, a Jewish Member of Parliament for Whitechapel, offered a reward for the capture of the Ripper, an action sanctioned by the Mile End Committee.

On 11 September, John Pizer, the infamous “Leather Apron” was arrested. But although he was a highly unpleasant character, he was obviously not the serial killer because he had firm alibis for all three murders. Pizer was released, but a number of others were picked up and questioned. Some were cranks and drunks, and others were clearly insane. The truth was that the Met. Police did not have a single reliable clue as to the identity of the silent killer who had terrorized East London.

At the end of September, he struck again, killing two women within 45 minutes. It was an attack of extraordinary daring. The butchered remains of Elizabeth Stride (45) were discovered in Dutfield Yard, off Berner Street at 1am on Sunday 30 September.

Like the other victims, her throat had been cut; almost severing the head from her body and her internal organs had been expertly removed. Police surgeons on the scene determined that she had died between 12.36 and 12.56am. Then, in Mitre Square, about a quarter of a mile away, another female corpse was discovered at 1.44 am. This was Katharine Eddowes (46). Police Constable Edward Watkins of the City Police, who found the body, reported: “I saw a woman lying on her back with her feet facing the square, her clothes up above her waist. I saw that her throat was cut and her bowels protruding. The stomach had been ripped open and she was lying in a pool of blood.”

Yet the night was not yet over. At 2.55am, Constable Alfred Long found a piece of bloody apron lying in the entrance to a building in Goulston Street. Just above the apron, written in white chalk on the black bricks of the archway was the wording: “The Juwes are The men that will not be Blamed for nothing.” The bloodstained apron came from Mrs Eddowes, and police believed that the writing was the killer’s. Whilst Inspector Abberline was preparing to have the writing photographed as vital evidence, Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Met. Police ordered it to be washed off. Abberline protested to no avail. Sir Charles later explained that he had made this controversial order to prevent a riot in Whitechapel. “I do not hesitate to say that if the writing had been left there would have been an onslaught upon the Jews (in Whitechapel), property would have been wrecked, and lives would probably have been lost,” he stated.

The Ripper managed to accomplish two horrific murders on 30 September without being seen by the police or anybody. Then, when the area was in a heightened state of alarm, swarming with police and vigilantes, he wrote in chalk on the Archway in Goulston Street. What he accomplished that night is nothing short of amazing.

Hundreds of letters allegedly from the murderer were sent to the police and news agencies, but most of these can be discounted as crank mail. Only three letters have been taken seriously by Ripper scholars. Two, in particular, which were written by the same individual, gave rise to the title “Jack the Ripper.” Before that time, the name had not been coined. The press of course seized on this dramatic name immediately.

A letter dated 25 September 1888 was addressed to The Boss, Central News Office. It read: “Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand job the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work and want to start again. The next job I shall do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the Police officers just for jolly, wouldn’t you? Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work and then give it out straight. My knife is so nice and sharp and I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck, Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.”

The editor treated this as a hoax and did not pass it on to the police for a couple of days. The night after the police received the letter; Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes were murdered. On Monday morning following the double killing, the Central News Agency received another letter postmarked 1 October 1888 in the same handwriting as the 25 September missive. The text: “I wasn’t coddling dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. You’ll hear about saucy Jack’s tomorrow - double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn’t finish her straight off. Had not time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again. Truly, Jack the Ripper.”

The third important letter was sent on 16 October to George Lusk, head of the Mile End Vigilance Committee, and was in a package containing a portion of a kidney. Dr Thomas Openshaw later confirmed that it was a human adult kidney, preserved in spirits rather than formalin. The accompanying letter was not written by the author of the two earlier letters. Complete with misspellings, it read: “From hell. Mr. Lusk, Sor, I send you half the kidney I took from one woman preserved it for you the other piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer. Signed, Catch me when you can. Mishter Lusk.” Dr Openshaw confirmed that the kidney portion belonged to someone suffering from Bright’s Disease, which afflicted Kate Eddowes.

Things went quiet for the next five weeks. There were no Ripper murders throughout October, although the terrified citizens of Whitechapel remained on high alert. Then in November, the Ripper struck again. A young Irish girl by the name of Mary Kelly (23) rented a first floor room in Miller’s Court behind Dorset Street. She made money as a streetwalker to support her boyfriend/pimp Joe Barnett. On 7 November, they had a bitter argument, and Barnett packed his possessions and left. When her landlord called at 13 Miller’s Court on Friday 9 November to collect the rent, he received no response to his knock. He then reached inside a broken window and pulled aside the curtain. What he saw inside almost made him vomit.

Soon scores of police officers were at the scene, including Inspector Abberline and Dr George Bagster Phillips. They opened the door to a small, cluttered room with almost no furniture. Mary’s body, unbelievably mutilated, lay sprawled on the bed. The cause of death was the severance of the carotid artery in the throat. The horrendous mutilation of this Ripper victim had been done after her death, and it was the worst yet.

Dr Thomas Bond, another veteran police surgeon, reported: “Her face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all of the features.”

As Dr Bond tried to reconstruct Mary’s desecrated corpse, he realised that her heart had been cut out and removed. Her breasts and many internal organs of her body had been cut away and placed by her body and around the room. Dr Bond estimated the time of the murder as between one or two o’clock in the morning, but this was very approximate. This time, the Ripper had killed his victim indoors, and had plenty of time to cut her body up to his own grisly satisfaction. Police surgeons concluded that as with all previous victims, Mary Kelly had been murdered with “a very sharp, strong knife about an inch in width and at least six inches long.”

Police did not know it then, but this was the last victim of Jack the Ripper.

Jack the Ripper, the suspects

FROM THE testimony of many eyewitnesses, certain probabilities emerged about the Whitechapel killer who came to be known as Jack the Ripper. Most of the victims had been seen with one or two men before their murders, and from descriptions police were able to compile a list of probabilities.

The Ripper was probably: (a) A white male, of average or just below average height. (b) Between 20 and 40 years of age. (c) Well dressed, not a labourer. (d) Either had lodgings in the East End of London, or knew the area very well. (e) Had medical expertise as five of the victims were sliced up with great anatomical skill. (f) May have been a foreigner. (g) Was right handed, as the slashes to the throats of his victims went from left to right. (h) A person with a regular job since all the murders occurred on weekends. (I) A single man who was able to roam the streets of Whitechapel at all hours.

Sir Melville MacNaghten succeeded Sir Charles Warren as the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in June 1889 after the Ripper murders had officially ended; though the investigation was ongoing. Macnaghten's final report included his theory on why the murders ended with the monstrous destruction of Mary Kelly and the identity of three key suspects he believed could be the killer. He wrote: "A rational theory is that the murderer's brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Miller's Court, and that he committed suicide; or was found to be so hopelessly mad by his relations that he was confined in some asylum.

"No one ever saw the Whitechapel killer. Many homicidal maniacs were suspected, but no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one. I will mention the cases of three men, any one of whom could have been likely to have committed this series of murders.

Mr A J Druitt, said to be a doctor and from a good family. He disappeared soon after the murder of Miss Kelly. His body was found in the Thames on 31 December 1888. He was insane and from private information I have little doubt that his own family believed him to have been the Ripper. (2) W Kosminski, a Polish Jew resident in Whitechapel. This man became insane owing to many years' indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, especially of the prostitute class, and had strong homicidal tendencies. He was removed to a lunatic asylum in March 1889. There are many circumstances connected with this man, which made him a strong Ripper suspect. (3) Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor and former convict, who was subsequently detained in an asylum as a potential homicidal maniac. Ostrog's whereabouts at the time of the murders in 1888 could never be ascertained."

The most important detective in the Ripper case was Chief Inspector Frederick George Abberline. He did not agree on the viability of the three suspects listed above. In 1903, he told reporters, "You can state most emphatically that Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject of the Ripper murders than it was fifteen years ago."

However, Abberline did have a favourite suspect of his own - a man named George Chapman, who was hanged in 1903 for poisoning his wife. Chapman's real name was Severin Antoniovich Klosowski, and he was born in Warsaw in 1865. He was apprenticed to a surgeon and went on to complete his medical studies at a Warsaw hospital. Klosowski immigrated to London early in 1887. He took a job as a hairdresser's assistant before opening his own barber's shop at 126 Cable Street.

He was most likely at this Whitechapel address during the Ripper murders. He bigamously married Lucy Badeski in 1888, hoping that the wife he left in Warsaw wouldn't find out about it. Ms Badeski bore him a son in 1890. The boy died of pneumonia in March 1891 and the couple moved to Jersey City in New Jersey, USA.

It was during this time that he violently attacked his wife, holding her down on the bed to prevent her from screaming and then reaching for a long sharp knife under the pillow. At that moment a customer entered the shop in front and saved her life. Later, Klosowski told her that he had meant to cut her head off and then bury her. "But the neighbours would have asked where I had gone to", she protested. Klosowski retorted calmly, "Oh, I would simply have told them that you had gone back to New York."

Lucy went back to London alone in May 1892 and Klosowski followed her in June that year. In 1893, he moved in with an Annie Chapman (obviously not the Ripper victim), but he left her in 1894 for another lady named Mary Spink, who gave him her inheritance of 500 pounds sterling. He changed his name to George Chapman, and they set up a barbershop, which prospered because of their "musical shaves": Mary played the piano whilst George shaved the customers. But Chapman beat his wife frequently, and in 1897 she died from severe stomach pains. Chapman had used tartar emetic, a colourless, odourless and nearly tasteless poison containing antimony. In small doses it brings on a gradual and painful death and the drug also has the effect of preserving its victim's body for years after death.

Chapman then moved in with Bessie Taylor, whom he also mistreated. Bessie experienced the same stomach problems as Annie Chapman and died in 1901 from "exhaustion from vomiting and diarrhea." Chapman then found another "wife" named Maud Marsh and treated her just as badly as all the other women in his violent life. When her mother became suspicious of Maud's illness and consulted a doctor, Chapman gave Maud a huge dose of poison, which killed her the following day. Chapman was arrested and Maud's body was found to contain a lethal amount of antimony.

His other two wives were exhumed and found remarkably preserved from the amount of antimony in their bodies. Chapman was charged with three murders, but was convicted only of Maud's. He was executed by hanging on 7 April 1903. Inspector Abberline was convinced that Chapman was the Ripper. He wrote in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1903, "There are a score of things which make me believe that Chapman was our man. The date of his arrival coincides with the beginning of the series of murders in Whitechapel, and the murders ceased when Chapman left for America, whilst similar murders were perpetrated in America after he went there. The fact that he studied medicine and surgery in Poland and Russia is well established. It is curious to note that the first (Ripper) murders were the work of an expert surgeon, whilst the recent poisoning cases were proved to be done by a man with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine. And Chapman's attempt to murder Lucy Badeski with a long knife in America is significant."

Chapman also had a regular job in Whitechapel, which kept him occupied during the week but free at weekends when the Ripper murders occurred. He was violent and homicidal with women and committed multiple murders of women. As Abberline wrote: "A man who could watch his wives being slowly tortured to death by poison, as he did, was capable of anything." But murderers very seldom change their MO. Could the terrible mutilator known as Jack the Ripper change his style to become the smooth poisoner who changed his name to George Chapman? The jury is still out on that important question. There is also the question of the unsolved murder and mutilation of Carrie Brown in Jersey City on 24 April 1891. Chapman was living in the vicinity at the time, and may also have committed this crime, though no direct evidence implicates him.

There is also a popular theory that a royal conspiracy was behind the Ripper murders. This was the premise for the recent movie "From Hell" starring Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Robby Coltrane and Ian Holm, and has spawned many documentaries and books. The theory goes like this: Prince Albert Victor, later Duke of Clarence and known as Eddy, was the grandson of Queen Victoria and in direct line to the British throne. His father later became King Edward V11. Had Eddy outlived his father, he would have become king.

Eddy frequently went slumming in the Whitechapel area. Here he had an affair with a shop girl named Annie Crook. Ms Crook became pregnant with his child, and then secretly married Eddy in a Roman Catholic wedding. Marrying and impregnating a Catholic girl of low social standing was a huge handicap for a future king and when this scandal got to the ears of his grandmother, she insisted on a drastic solution to the problem. The prime minister (The Marquess of Salisbury) then delegated this task to Queen Victoria's royal physician, Sir William Gull. Dr Gull had Annie removed to a mental home where he crudely lobotomised her, leaving her institutionalised for the rest of her poor life. Mary Kelly was caring for Annie's daughter, Alice Margaret, when special branch officers kidnapped Annie. Now Mary, along with her friends Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Kate Eddowes and Liz Stride all attended the secret wedding and knew about the unofficial royal birth. They talked, and became a major liability to the Crown.

Dr Gull then cleverly created the persona of Jack the Ripper, and set out to silence these troublesome whores. Gull's coachman locates each of Mary's friends and individually persuades them to get into his coach where Gull drugs them with grapes laced with laudanum, and then slashes and mutilates them. In the movie, Depp plays Inspector Abberline as an opium addict with visions who has an affair with Mary Kelly. He sends Alice and Mary to Ireland before Sir William ghoulishly butchers a young French girl who happens to be visiting Ms Kelly in her apartment. Of course, this poor French streetwalker is mistaken for Mary Kelly, who is then safe from the Ripper, and lives happily ever afterwards, treating Alice as her own daughter.

In the movie, Dr Gull is a demented ritual executioner and Gull's Masonic group, a virtual who's who of London's upper class, including police officials like Sir Robert Anderson, help Gull in his efforts to protect the throne from scandal. Martha Tabram's murder is included as a Ripper killing to tie in with another fanciful theory: Gull carefully deposits the bodies around Whitechapel so that they make up the six points of the Star of David when a line is drawn through the locations on a map. And a young Inspector Abberline (Johnny Depp with a cockney accent) falling in love with Mary Kelly is just pure romantic slush from Hollywood screenwriters.

Most of us love a conspiracy theory but this one is peppered with falsehoods. There DID exist a woman named Annie Crook, who worked in a shop in Cleveland Street and she did have an illegitimate daughter named Alice Margaret. But there is no evidence that she ever knew Eddy, who anyway preferred men to women. However, he did go slumming in Whitechapel, where there was a brothel in Cleveland Street that catered to wealthy homosexuals. It was often raided by police, but if Eddy was there when one of these raids occurred, it was obviously hushed up. (Homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967). There is no evidence that connects Mary Kelly to Annie Crook or nothing to suggest that all the victims knew each other. In the movie, they form a tight-knit group who would often gossip together in a Whitechapel pub. This is more screenwriter's fantasy. The victims were murdered where they were found, and not in a coach. Also, from witnesses at the crime scene areas, it is very unlikely that more than one man carried out the murders. And how, among Whitechapel's 1,200 streetwalkers, were Dr Gull and his coachman able to locate and track down the six women who had witnessed the secret wedding? Sir William Gull was 70 years old in 1888, and only partially recovered from an attack of severe paralysis the previous year, which prevented him carrying out any surgery. He did not die in a lunatic asylum as the movie depicts, but expired in his home on 29 January 1890 after a third and final stroke.

There is also no evidence that Dr Gull and high level police officers involved in the Ripper investigation were ever members of the Freemasons. The word "Juwes" as written in chalk on a wall after the double homicide on 30 September is not an ancient term used by Masons to describe Jewish people.

Another theory has Eddy, Duke of Clarence, being the Jack the Ripper. Suffering from tertiary syphilis, he goes into murderous rages and haunts the streets of Whitechapel searching for victims. His appalled royal keepers discover this, and finally lock him away until his death from syphilis. Again, there is little evidence to support this. Eddy died from the influenza epidemic of 1892, and never showed an inclination to violence. Anyway, when the double murders of Stride and Eddowes took place on 30 September, Eddy was at the royal estates in Balmoral, Scotland - a cast iron alibi.

In 1992, Mr Michael Barrett, a scrap metal dealer from Liverpool, made public a diary reputedly written by a man named James Maybrick who died in 1889. In this amazing diary, Maybrick confessed to being Jack the Ripper. Barrett said that his late friend Tony Devereux gave him the diary, though his own family had no knowledge of it or how it came into his hands. Maybrick was a cotton merchant who prospered in the USA before returning to Liverpool, England in the 1880's. He had contacted malaria whilst in America and was taking a combination of strychnine and arsenic to keep it under control. His wife Florence (Florie) was charged with his murder when Maybrick died from arsenic poisoning on 11 May 1889. After a very hasty and unfair trial, Florie was convicted and sentenced to death. The judge had not allowed any evidence of Maybrick's long arsenic addiction to be introduced into the trial. Florie spent 15 years in jail before her appeal on these grounds was upheld, and she was released.

Experts who studied the Maybrick diary found inaccuracies in the accounts of the murders that seem to have been taken from contemporary newspaper reports. For example, expert Philip Sugden writes of the Kelly murder: "We are told that the various parts of her body were strewn all over the room, that her severed breasts were placed on the bedside table and that the killer took the key of her room away with him. None of these statements are true."

Finally in 1995, many Ripper experts who had labelled the Maybrick diary a brazen hoax were justified by Barrett's confession that he was the author of a fake diary supposedly written by Jack the Ripper. He stated that his wife Anne Barrett had written it in ink, working from his typed notes taken from newspaper reports of 1888.

Before this, Ripper experts John Douglas and Mark Olshaker had rejected James Maybrick as a suspect based on his personality and history. They wrote: "How does a 50-year-old man with a family, children and no sociopathy suddenly blossom into a disorganised serial killer? The answer is that he cannot, and did not."

Also it is extremely unlikely that a man living in Liverpool would travel all the way to London to stalk and kill prostitutes on weekends. Maybrick had no detailed knowledge of the streets and alleyways of Whitechapel, whilst the serial killer certainly did.

So here we have some of the major suspects: M J Druitt, Wadislaw Kosminski, Michael Ostrog, Severin Klosowski/George Chapman, Sir William Gull, Eddy, the Duke of Clarence, and James Maybrick. Remember that some conspiracy theories concerning Jack the Ripper stretch credibility to the bursting point. Take your pick from any of the above.

Only two things are certain about Jack the Ripper. (1) He is dead, and probably has been for many years. (2) The case will never be solved.

(Research: Jack the Ripper, Crime Library.com. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, and Most notorious serial killers by Marilyn Bardsley).

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