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JtR letter with hair belonging to Catherine Eddowes
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It's a bit faint so I can't make out every word, but I think it says "Catherine Eddowes" and "1st victim of Jack the Ripper Aug 1888"....so I'm guessing it's not real
***FRAME MAY BE SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT THAN WHAT IS PICTURED BUT THE SAME SIZE*** On the 9th of November, 1888 Mary Jean Kelly was slain in her rented room by the infamous serial killer, Jack the Ripper. Mary is widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the ripper, as well as his most
On the 9th of November, 1888 Mary Jean Kelly was slain in her rented room by the infamous serial killer, Jack the Ripper. Mary is widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the ripper, as well as his most gruesome.
During the investigation of her murder, Sgt Edward Badham of the “H” division Whitechapel Police collected a lock of her blood drenched hair. The hair sample was framed and filed away, not to be seen for over 100 years. That was until an antique dealer name George Payne purchased a box of files from the estate sale of one of Bedham’s grandsons. Tucked neatly in the rear of the box was the hair sample, perfectly preserved in the frame.
The frame is wood, weathered with age, roughly 8x6 inches with a frame prop and hanging hook. The hair itself is mounted on aged paper under glass.
*Note* The hair has more of a reddish tinge to it than what is depicted in the attached photographs.
Eddowes wasn't the 1st victim of the Ripper like the letter states.
I wondered if it was an "L", not a "1", Dane - that is "lst" as a kind of shorthand for "last". This could work in two ways: 1) there are some who don't believe Kelly to have been a JTR victim; 2) this could be a way of pretending that the plait was sold to Central News before Kelly was killed, thus giving it an earlier apparent provenance and greater "authenticity".
This was evidently such a lame hoax that it scarcely matters, but it might give some insight into what the hoaxer was trying to achieve.
Such hoaxes are not unknown (but let us not get involved with Florence's husband "diary) today, but in that period there was a big one regarding a more recent national tragedy. Somebody claimed the body of Lord Kitchener, who had drowned in the torpedo sinking of HMS Hampshire in June 1916) had washed ashore in Denmark, and been buried there. The body was brought back to London for "display" purposes (the man involved, one "Frank Powers" had been pushing for a full disclosure of the events leading to the tragedy of 1916, claiming Kitchener's demise was plotted in London by his political enemies). The end result was the authorities stepped in, thinking that the whole thing was a crude and nauseating hoax, and the coffin opened - it was empty. Powers disappeared shortly afterwards. This was in 1926 or 1927 I believe. Only once have I seen a defense of Powers' claims by one Harold Wilkins in a book about odd mysteries that I read in the 1980s, claiming a second conspiracy in the form of a preliminary raid on the locale of where the body was kept (i.e., to make sure that there would not be any body found in the box), but I read that Wilkins' book and he really is full of odd thoughts and mistakes. He almost makes McCormick look trustworthy.
By the way, Sir Edward Marshall Hall died in 1927. Maybe that was part of the reason he is the person chosen for that "contract" offer to be sent to. He also had nothng, in his distinguished criminal defense career, linking him to Chapman. If you read the book "For the Defense" by Edward Majoribanks, he was connected (at least so Majoribanks says - I have some doubts about two of the stories) to defending an unnamed man who wrote threatening letters to (I believe) Lord Sheffield, signed "Jack the Ripper"; defended as a junior before the Privy Council, Frederick Deeming, and was involved with the trial of a much married bigamist, whom Marshall Hall thought was the doppelganger of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, and possibly had an arrangement of giving each other alibis. Chapman was prosecuted by the then Attorney-General of Great Britain, Sir Edward Carson, who was alive in 1927 (but in retirement. and watching events carefully in the two Irish states), and would live until the 1930s. Maybe the hoaxer here got his two legal giants mixed up, and meant for Carson to be the recipient of the offer.
Thanks for posting and the size is perfect for me.
These are not clues, Fred.
It is not yarn leading us to the dark heart of this place.
They are half-glimpsed imaginings, tangle of shadows.
And you and I floundering at them in the ever vainer hope that we might corral them into meaning when we will not.
We will not.
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